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J d- I 



Book,^,^ 13 



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III! 

VCISE 
KNOIVLEI 
L1BRJRT 



HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE 
EARLIEST HISTORICAL TIME 
TO THE YEAR i 



The Concise Knowledge Library. 

A series of volumes on great subjects, containing in an abridged 
form a wealth of exact information which can be thoroughly relied 
upon by the student, and yet of such a popular character as to meet 
the needs of the general reader. The wide range of subjects covered 
insures a very complete and reliable reference library especially valu- 
able for school and home use. 

Each, small 8vo, half leather, $2.00. 

The History of the World, from the Earliest Historical 
Time to the Year 1898. By Edgar Sanderson, M. A., some- 
time Scholar of Clare College. Cambridge, author of " A His- 
tory of the British Empire," " The British Empire in the Nine- 
teenth Century," " Outlines of the World's History," etc. 

The thoroughness and compactness of this well-digested and comprehensive 
work render it invaluable as a convenient book of reference. The Ameiican 
edition has brought the history of our own country down to the close of the 
war with Spain. 

The Historical Reference = Book. Comprising a Chrono- 
logical Table of Universal History, a Chronological Dictionary 
of Universal History, a Biographical Dictionary. With Geo- 
graphical Notes. For the use of Students, Teachers, and 
Readers. By Louis Heilprin. Fifth edition, revised to 1898. 

"Quite the most compact, convenient, accurate, and authoritative work of 
the kind in the language. It is a happy combination of history, biography, 
and geography, and should find a place in eve ry family library, as well as at 
the elbow of every scholar and writer. . . . The typography remains ideally 
good for such a manual."— New York Evening Post. 

Astronomy. By Agnes M. Clerke, A. Fowler, A. R. C. S., 
and J. Ellard Gore, M. R. I. A. 

" This is an excellent work, which is not only of a high standard throughout, 
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career of usefulness and popularity. " — London Athenaum. 

Natural History. By R. Lydekker, B. A., W. F. Kirby, 

F. L. S., B. B. Woodward, F. R. S., R. Kirkpatrick, R. I. 

Pocock, R. Bowdler Sharpe, LL. D., W. Garstang, 

M. A., F. A. Bather, F. G. S., and H. M. Bernard, M. A. 

" The book is scientific as well as popular, and is as complete and full in its 

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come before the reading public in a long while." — Brooklyn Eagle. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



I I II O >NCIS1 KM iwi.l- DGE LIBR \KV 



HISTORY OF THE WORLD 

FROM THE 

I ARLIEST HISTORICAL TIM] 
TO THE YEAR 1898 

BY 

I DG \K SANDERS( >N. M. A. 

1 1 

. HOB "l ! 
THt UK II I SH KM Ilk I I\ 1 UK NINETEENTH CENTUEY, 
I III. WOl 

WITH M Ms 




M W N ( >RK 

I> \ I ' I • I . I . I ( >N \ND COMPANY 



KK l 



19679 



Copyright, 1898, 
Bv D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



:u° 







CONTENTS. 



Sction I. VNCIENT HISTORY, 

•I THE BEGINNING OF HISTORICAL INFORMATION I<> THE 
. 01 fHE WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE AD . 






•-3 



Booft I. 

THE GRBA1 EMPIRES: EASTERN NATIONS. 

I Eci PI AND mi I '.vii I \n 3 

II. Thai i i o-Bab Empiri i 

ill Thi Assyrian Empiri 

IV Thi Jr.' ... 

V. I HI I'll' 

VI. I in : 
VII. 'I in " d Pi rsi ■ 

. 
vm Thi Parthiai 



vi Contents 



Bool? II. 

THE WESTERN NATIONS: GREECE. 

CHAP. PAGES 

I. Introductory : The Aryan Immigration into Europe 69, 70 
II. Greece. First Period : From the Dorian Migration 

to the Persian Wars (iico — 500 b.c.) . . . 70-87 

III. Second Period : The Persian Wars, and Struggles 

AMONG THE GREEK STATES FOR SUPREMACY (50O — 

338 B.C.) 88-IIO 

IV. Third Period: Gr.eco- Macedonian Age, down to 

Roman Conquest (338 — 146 b.c.) .... 110-117 
V. The Greatness of Athens 1 17-122 



ISoob III. 

ROME (? 753 B.C.— A.D. 476). 

I. Mythical Period of Kings to Beginning of Punic 

Wars (? 753 — 264 b.c.) 122-138 

II. From the Beginning of the Punic Wars to the 

Conquest of Carthage and Greece (264 — 146 b.c.) 138-146 

III. The Decline and Fall of the Republic (146 — 27 b.c.) 146-158 

IV. Imperial Rome to Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c. 

— a.d. 476) 158-178 



Section II. MEDIEVAL HISTORY, 

FROM END OF WESTERN EMPIRE TO THE DISCOVERY 
OF AMERICA (A.D. 476—1492). 

1$0Q\\ I. 

FROM PARTITION OF WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE TO 
TREATY OF VERDUN (A.D. 476—843). 

I. Italy ; the Papacy ; the (Greek) Byzantine Empire ; 
Spain ; Frank Kingdoms ; Feudalism ; Britain and 
England . 179-203 



Contents 



VII 



111 K \ki mr GrI \i ; iiik 



MPIRE 






Booh II. 

TR1 .'■' VERDUN TO CRUSADE PER: 

(A.D 

17ROPI \' N I 5T 215-230 

I! 1 III! I' A !IK 

mi Byzanti 
Empire; ihk I wt Italian Republics 



BOOft III. 
THE CRUSADE PERIOD (A.D 

I. The I'i udai ism , 1 he Agi 01 



ihk British 

'.' \ > . I f AMI I . SP UN; 1 111: 


III. G Italy 



5 






BOOft IV. 

D 

1 



v iii Contents 

CHAP. PAGES 

III. Southern Europe: Italy— the Papacy, Naples and 

Sicily, Venice, Genoa ; the Moors in Spain ; the 
Turks; Downfall of Greek (Eastern or Byzantine) 
Empire 337-362 

IV. Medleval Civilisation: Rise of Towns; the Hansa 

League ; Decay of Feudalism ; Art ; Invention ; the 
Renaissance or Revival of Learning . . . 362-376 



Section III. MODERN HISTORY. 

(A.D. 1492—1898.) 

Bool? I. 

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO THE PEACE OF 
WESTPHALIA (1492— 1648). 

I. Discovery of America ; Conquest of Mexico ; Con- 
quest of Peru ; the Cape Route to India . . 377-389 
II. Europe before the Reformation ..... 389-396 

III. The Reformation ; Wars of Charles V. . . . 397-408 

IV. The Reformation (continued) ; the Catholic Reaction 408-432 
V. Spain and the Netherlands ; the Armada . . . 432-450 

VI. The Thirty Years' War; the First Stuarts . . 450-461 
VII. France; Southern and Eastern Europe . . . 461-474 



Book II. 

PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO FRENCH REVOLUTION 

(1648— 1789). 

I. The British Isles 474-482 

II. The Wars of Louis XIV 482-498 



Contents 



i\ 



III. Ci M R \l , N< tRl III RN, AND E \-i : 

Russia ; nu Si \ i n Yi vrs' War , 

Russia and Turkey; mi Par n "i Poi \m> . .: 

I\'. The Trans-Atlantic Problem: Greai Britain, 

I'k Spain 314523 

\". France; Southern Europe; mi Pre-revolutionary 

?■ 

VI. liu- American Revolutionary War .... 533 



Booh III. 

.!/ THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
TO THE VGRESS OF VIENNA 

I Thi French Revolution u*d Napoi eai 

D 1 1 -: II AND ' . . . . 

II. I in N u War (ift .... 55 3 



I 

II 

III. 
IV. 



VI 

VII 

VIII 



Boor I v. 

EUROPE FROM i- 

1 HI ' ' I \\'< >K K ...... 

I MP1 RIAL 1 

i 

I : 

i . . . . 

i | 



- 



x Contents 

Section IV. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY 
OF ASIA. 

CHAP. PAGES 

I. China and Japan 644-653 

II. India 654-677 

III. Persia, Arabia, Medieval and Modern; Siam . . 677-682 

IV. Asiatic Possessions of Great Britain and other 

European Nations, apart from India, Burma, and 
Central Asia 682-6S6 

Section V. AFRICA, MEDI/EVAL AND MODERN. 

I. Northern Africa 687-694 

II. Soudan ; Abyssinia . 694-699 

III. British and other European Possessions in Africa. 699-719 

Section VI. AMERICA ; AUSTRALASIA. 

I. North America : British Possessions .... 720-727 

II. United States (1783—1898) 7^7-747 

III. Mexico; West Indies; Central and South America. 747-760 

IV. Australasia ". 760-764 

INDEX 765 



A HISTORY OF THK WORLD. 



Section I. ANCIENT HISTORY, 

••I Till KM. in. HISTORICAL INFORMATION I<> llll 

IWNPALL <»l Mil WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE, 

( ? B.( . 476 A.I». ) 

IN I RODUCT< >RY. 

A HISTORY of th< lay well be prefaced bj some account 

by whon irld ia peopled. The 

human types or families; of mankind arc the 
1 ■ . 1 11 M mgolian, and the Ethiopian. I I 

mainly r I rope and America; the Mongolians 

ilasia ; the 1 Ethiopians in Al 
members <>f the human 
round th re between them. 

>n and classification i 
families i I in the I rhich 

. the M 11 
the ' the M 

ition is based upon ■ omp iri 
: which tl 
bin, the hair, the the tern; 

and ' 

ami mainly oval 
prisii 



2 A History of the World 

provided with creeds founded on revelations, and having a priesthood 
of a mediatorial character, or else by the form of religion called 
Brahmanism. 

The Mongolians have a skin rough in texture and yellowish in 
hue ; hair dull black in colour, coarse and lank ; large cheek-bones, 
narrow, almond-shaped, rather oblique eyes, small nose, and features 
broad and flat ; and a sluggish, passive temperament, marked by 
much endurance, and mind fairly proficient in art and letters, but 
poor in science. Their religion is either polytheistic, or one in- 
volving spirit-worship (animism), and with a belief in visions and 
dreams, or else is Buddhistic. 

The Ethiopic races are blackish or quite black in colour, with 
a cool, velvety skin, having a distinct odour; they have jet-black, 
short, woolly or frizzly hair ; high cheek-bones, broad, flat nose, 
and thick lips. Their temperament is sensuous, cheerful, unintel- 
lectual, and fitful in its changes from gaiety to ferocity. They have 
no science, art, or literature worthy of the name. Their religion 
is non-theistic, but consists of nature-worship, with witchcraft and 
fetichism strongly marked. 

The Ethiopic races are found, firstly, in Africa, southwards from 
the Sahara ; the northern or Soudanese branch, down to about 
5° north latitude, being negroes in the full sense, while the southern 
or Bantu family is composed of more or less mixed negro and 
negroid peoples. The Soudanese show, to a large extent, physical 
unity and linguistic diversity ; the Bantus are remarkable for linguistic 
unity and physical diversity. To the Soudanese group belong the 
Mandingans, Haussas, Yorubas, Fantis, Bagirmis, Masais, and many 
more ; the Bantus include the Zulu-Kaffirs, the Swahilis of the 
eastern coast, the Basutos, the Bechuanas, Barotses, Mashonas, 
and many more tribes of the Congo basin, the western coast, and 
South Africa. Secondly, an Oceanic division of the Ethiopics 
includes four branches : the Tasmanians, now extinct ; the Australian 
aborigines, least like the other negro or negroid peoples, and now 
nearly extinct; the Papuans of New Guinea and the Eastern Archi- 
pelago ; and the closely allied Melanesians of the New Hebrides, 
the Solomon Isles, Fiji, and New Caledonia. Both regions of the 
Ethiopic race contain dwarfish groups, Negritos or Negrillos (little 
negroes), such as the Akkas, Batwas, and Bushmen, in Africa, and 
the Simangs of Malacca and the Mincopies of the Andaman Isles. 

The Mongolians include, firstly, the Mongolo-Tartars of Central 
and Northern Asia, parts of Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, and Asia 



I he ( Race 

Min ■ ndly, the people of China proper, Japan, Indo-China, 

and Tibet ; thirdly, the hulk of the inhabitants of Finland, Lapland 

ce of Russia), the Ural Mountains, the 
middle course of the Vi N thern Siberia, and Hungary; fourthly, 
the M Jynesians of the '■ ninsula, the Sunda groups, 

the Philippines, Formosa, Mad a Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti, 

Hawaii, and i I groups of islands in Eastern Polynesia; 

fifthly, the American Indians and the Eskim i 

The ' ins arc the inhabitants, in the main, of Southern and 

tern Asia, l rope, and North Africa, and of the whole 
rid and Australasia. This great, by far the greatest, historical 
of mankind, .is comprising the most highly civilised peoples, 
1 achievements are the subjects of history in the 
. has three main branches. These are the Aryan or 
n ; the Semitic; and the Hamitic The Ar 
prise Hindus, Persians, Afghans, Beluchis, Armenian , I 
;cnt and modern), Latin races (ancient), Teutons or Germans, 
thuanians, a rtians. The 3 - are 

represented historically by the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Assyrians, 
1 .1 occupy in the modern 

ia, Syria, Arabia, much of North Africa, and 
The Hamites or Hamitic branch of t I 
ide many dwellers in North and East Africa, as the Berbers of 
te Tuaregs of the W - hara, th I 

1 peoples of < lalla land and Somali land. 

resented, 
ire shall see, by th< the only gr< it Hai ti< nation. 

1 properl) 

r tin- mountain-region whence the nan 
<lerr. oe of the finest I the 

human r. ' 

whi« h n< n be 

■ior to all historic al monum 

the i 

I 
i 
■ 



4 A History of the World 

region of Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea, and north of the 
Hindu Kush and of the ridge connecting that range with the Elburz 
Mountains. This race, before its members were parted by migration, 
had made a marked advance from the purely barbarous or savage 
state. They led a peaceful life, devoted mainly to pastoral and 
agricultural work. The family life, basis of all society and law, 
was firmly settled, with due reverence for its ties and duties, and 
with a recognition, by special names, of the degrees of relationship 
created by marriage. From the solitary family life in detached 
dwellings they had proceeded to the gathering of hom;steads into 
villages and towns. The family had grown into the tribe, and the 
father, the family-head, had been developed into a primitive king. 
Progress in the arts of life was shown by the grinding of grain into 
meal, and the making of meal into bread ; by the weaving of cloth and 
its sewing into garments ; by the use of the metals gold and silver, 
and of a third metal which was probably iron ; by wielding tools of 
hewn and polished stone ; by building boats for use on rivers and 
lakes, the sea or ocean being yet to them unknown ; and not 
least, by the naming of numbers as far as a hundred. Tall of 
stature, powerful in frame, white-skinned, fair-haired, and probably 
blue-eyed, this primitive race had minds open to all impressions, 
observant of nature's phenomena, and souls whose religion con- 
sisted in the worship of the beneficent Powers of Nature — the 
sky, light, fire, the sun, the earth, the waters, and the winds — and 
in an abhorrence, without any attempt at propitiation, of the harmful 
Powers, such as Darkness and Drought. Praise, thanksgiving, 
and prayers for help were the ritual of these simple and manly 
beings, along with sacrificial offerings to which their bright deities 
were bidden as guests and of which they partook as friends share 
in a feast at the house of a friend. The word Arya, in Sanskrit, 
a language derived from the original Aryan tongue, means " noble," 
"exalted," "venerable," and as the Caucasian presents us with the 
highest type among the three families of man, so the Aryan branch 
displays the noblest pattern of that highest type. This king of 
races claims of right the foremost place on history's page, as 
that which is most worthy of renown for energy, enterprise, and 
skill, and has reached the highest point of intellectual development, 
as manifested in science, literature, and art, and in the priceless 
possession of political freedom. A grand event came in the history 
of mankind when this Aryan race, obeying a law of movement 
found acting in all ages of the world, began to move from their 



1 ■■. isions <<f Ancient Hisl 5 

ancestral tarted <>n their mission t>) fill, to 

and [•> civilise the Western world. I rms they 

and in their new region beca 

of tl 1 the Italians, the Greeks, the Teutoi . and 

at a later tun inant <>f the primitive 

• ie I [imalayas and the 1 Imdu 

. Mount 1 the Punjab, to become the dominant 

in t ; lley, while others became settlers in Persia, on 

the plateau whose modern name h Iran <>r Elan, a word akin 

Turn the earliest history based on records wi 

or painted on stone <>r brick, uc find 

cnt history, ethnogi , in two divisions. The first 

stern peoples known I lamitic) ; 

ins. Hel ■ enii ians, 

all Semitii II ndus perhaps the Phrygians, and 

and Persians, all Aryan : and the Parthians, 

. and Jap ' sian. In this order, 

taking the PI with the I the Hin 

rate later treatment, we deal with 

empires. The second division, that <>f the 

the Cell Italians), 

ire have seen, of Aryan ra< 



BOOK I. 

THE GREAT EMPIRES: EASTERN NATIONS. 

Chapter I. — The Egyptians. 

In the north-east of Africa, at a time so uncertain that the date 
for the first king, assigned by learned men, varies between 5700 
and 2440 B.C., arose a wonderful Hamitic people, who became great 
in arts and arms, and left behind them architectural and sculptural 
monuments which have been objects of amazement and admira- 
tion to all beholders. A true conception of Ancient Egypt 
requires us to disregard the modern map, and to view the 
territory as comprising nothing but the narrow valley of the Nile, 
extending for about 700 miles from the First Cataract to a 
point below (north of) Cairo, and the outspreading Delta, fan- 
shaped, lying between that point and the sandy shores of the 
Mediterranean. The original seven mouths of the mighty river 
have now been reduced, by silting-up, to two, the Rosetta and 
Damietta outlets. The valley, a ravine cut out, in the course 
of ages, in the sandy and rocky soil, nowhere exceeds ten miles 
in breadth, and is sometimes narrowed to one, the basin being 
bounded to east and west by hills generally but 300 feet above 
sea-level. The whole area of this famous country was less 
than that of Belgium, and was, in its most flourishing days, at 
least as densely peopled, with a multitude of towns and villages, 
large and small, forming one great hive of human beings. The 
valley is known as Upper Egypt or the Said, the Delta as Lower 
Egypt. The country was, in a peculiar sense, the region of the 
Nile. That great, and till very recent days, mysterious river, was 
at once the creator of Lower Egypt by its deposit of mud, and the 
supporter of all life in Upper and Lower Egypt alike by its annual 
overflow. In the words of the Greek historian, Egypt was " the 
gift of the Nile," and so dependent were the inhabitants for sub- 

6 




THE ANCIENT 



The Egyptians 7 

sistence on the due rise of the river, varying from an average of 
36 feet in Upper Egypt to 25 at Cairo, that a " bad Nile," or 
deficient overflow, meant scarcity of food, and a great lack of 
increase, happily rare, brought absolute famine. The almost utter 
absence of rain, storm, fog, frost, and snow is the peculiarity of the 
climate, which has really but two seasons — spring from October into 
May, with the fruit-trees blossoming in February and crops reaped 
before the end of April, and summer for the rest of the year. The 
great lake, studded with islands in the form of towns and villages, 
into which the Nile spread itself out in its yearly time of flood, left 
behind, on its retirement, an expanse of rich soil which made the 
country the most productive in the world, bearing a triple harvest 
in the ancient days, a crop of grain followed by two crops of grasses 
or of vegetables fit for the food of mankind. The wheat of Egypt, 
the most valuable product, supplied all neighbouring peoples in time 
of dearth, and the city of Rome, in all her later time, was almost 
wholly fed from the same bountiful source. Doora (a species of 
millet) and flax were also largely grown. The monuments show us 
the pressing of the grapes of Egypt, and the date-palm was ever at 
hand with its delicious fruit. The country possessed great advan- 
tages, beyond its wonderful fertility, for the progress of a nation to 
prosperity and power. The river supplied a highway for rapid 
communication from end to end, and the situation for commerce 
was most favourable in the ready access northwards to the Medi- 
terranean, and eastwards, by the Red Sea, to the Indian Ocean or 
Eastern Sea. In timber the country was not rich, but serviceable 
woods were easily imported. The tall smooth reed called papyrus 
supplied long-lasting paper from its pith, and the lovely white water- 
lily, the lotus, was the favourite flower — an offering to the gods, an 
ornament worn by guests at the banquet, a model for architectural 
forms. Fish and water-fowl abounded, and the sport-loving 
Egyptians had "big game " in the hippopotamus and the crocodile. 
The early days of Egypt are shrouded in night. Whence came 
the Egyptian people of olden time ? We cannot say. The nation 
was, beyond all reasonable doubt, of Hamitic race, allied to the 
negro- peoples in physical and mental character, and in language, 
though it became, before the most flourishing period of its history, 
largely mingled with foreign elements from the Semitic peoples to 
the north-east, in Asia, from the Ethiopians to the south, and the 
Libyans to the west. Upon the whole, the Egyptians are remarkable 
for the independent, almost isolated, development of their civilisation. 



8 A. History of the World 

The history of the country, in its long duration, its wars and con- 
quests, its 30 dynasties, as arranged in the 3rd century B.C. by the 
priest Manetho, in a work of which only chronological epitomes 
remain, can only be dealt with briefly in a few salient points. M'na 
or Menes, a king variously placed at about 5000, 4500, and 3900 
years B.C., is represented as the monarch who instituted laws and 
divine worship, and founded the city of Memphis on a site close to 
that of the modern Cairo. Two empires are usually recognised, the 
old empire, lasting from the time of Menes till 1670 B.C., and the 
new empire, from that date till the Persian conquest. Monumental 
history begins with a king named Seneferu, who conquered the 
Sinaitic peninsula, for the sake of its mines of copper and of 
turquoise. An incised tablet in that region records his person and 
exploit. Other monuments of his time show the first-known hiero- 
glyphical writing, and there are pyramids belonging to the same 
early age. The monarchs named Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, 
respectively called Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus by Herodotus, 
were the builders of the three largest pyramids, those of Gizeh, near 
Cairo. The stupendous size of these works is well known. The 
largest, well styled by the great French archaeologist Lenormant, 
in respect of its mass, " the most prodigious of all human con- 
structions," had originally a base of which each side was 764 
feet in length, and a perpendicular height of 480 feet. Its area 
was above 13 acres, and its materials would have built a city of 
22,000 solid stone houses, with walls afoot thick, 20 feet of frontage, 
and 30 feet of depth from front to back, the walls being 30 feet in 
height from the bottom of the foundation, and the party-walls having 
one-third the material of the main walls. Modern builders fully 
accept the statement of Herodotus that the construction of the " Great 
Pyramid" employed the continuous labour of 100,000 men for 20 
years. The basement stones are in many cases 30 feet long, 5 feet 
high, and 4 or 5 feet wide, and weigh each from 46 to 57 tons, and 
the interior contains an elaborate system of chambers, galleries, and 
ventilation-shafts. The work displays marvellous mechanical skill in 
the fact of immense blocks of granite being brought from Syene, 500 
miles away, polished like glass, and fitted together so accurately that 
it is very difficult to detect the joints. 

About 2400 b.c. the seat of government of the old empire seems 
to have been removed to Thebes, about 400 miles up the Nile 
from Memphis. The place had long been a provincial city of 
note, with a special style of manners, speech, religion, and mode of 



I I . tiana 
f this pei 

I 

Is and i 

l this line (Manet 

I 
I from the 1 
III, 

• 
item branch <>f the ri 

. into .1 natural d 
He th 

• 
rid without th I 

ham, with his 

■ rule 
within the Delta, the valley of tl 

f ti 

in .ill I 

■ 

i 
■ 

I 
I 



io A History of the World 

and a period of conquest commenced under Thothmes I., grandson 
of Aahmes, and a monarch whose grandmother was of Ethiopian 
or Kushite race. He carried his arms far into Nubia on the south, 
extending the frontier to Tombos, beyond Dongola, and. through 
Syria as far as the Euphrates. Egypt thus entered on a new career, 
coming boldly to the front as a great nation aiming at wide 
dominion abroad. His daughter Hatasu reigned as queen along 
with her brother Thothmes II., and with sole power after his 
death, assuming male attire, with the style and title of " King," and 
playing a manly part in her regal office. Galleys for oars and sails 
were built on the western shore of the Red Sea, and commerce 
arose with southern Arabia for spices and incense. A glorious 
time for Egypt came in the reign of her brother and successor 
Thothmes III., a very able and ambitious man, who had been for 
many years under her control as his co-ruler. He marched into 
Syria, won a great victory over the Palestinian nations at Megiddo, 
and became master of the whole of Syria and part of Mesopotamia. 
For many years he was almost constantly engaged in expeditions 
into the East, making the monarchs of Babylon and Assyria tremble 
on their thrones. He also exacted from the Ethiopians to the 
south vast tributes of gold, ivory, ebony, and other valuables. He 
was both the greatest of Egyptian conquerors and one of the chief 
builders and patrons of art, erecting numerous temples and other 
monuments at the chief towns. One of his obelisks is now at 
Rome, another in Constantinople, a third in London, a fourth at 
New York. We may note that in this monarch's reign, in the part 
of the Delta called in Scripture " the land of Goshen," the children 
of Israel were rapidly growing in numbers and prosperity. His 
grandson, Amenhotep III. or Amenophis, is famous for the erection 
of the two seated colossi at Thebes, the greatest ever seen in the 
world, formed of a single solid block of sandstone, still more than 
60 feet in height, after being subject for over 3,000 years to the 
corroding effect of weather. Nothing more striking can be conceived 
in art than these sublimely tranquil figures, sitting alone amid a 
verdant expanse, with islands of ruins in their rear. One of this 
Amenhotep's palace-temples was at Luxor, on the eastern bank 
of the Nile, a superb construction 800 feet long, and from 100 to 
200 feet broad, with two obelisks, of which one is now in the centre 
of the Place de la Concorde at Paris. 

Early in the 14th century B.C. we find Egyptian forces of 
Seti I. or Sethos in garrison at Tyre and Aradus in Canaan, and 



The Egypti 1 1 

•his time that new conflicts arose b 
rful people called Khit.i or 11 had capita 

d Karkhemish on the l 
had fought with the I under Thothmes III., and 

m pow< r. The n ms< ripti 

prived the Hittites 
i .«>r Rami ■ ■ 11, styled " th< 

the 
battles were fought ; but the 

I II"' : 

and the m.irr to a Hittite princess. From this 

lime forward Egyptian influence and dominion in south-western 

! of the pyramids became again simply 
i her former boundarii 
I. and R II exhibit the culminating point of 

tian .irt, as regards the number, variety, and beauty of ai 

I he pillared hall of > feet in 

th and 1 70 in br< »j [64 m 

. 
n circumference. I he 

. and that, with the walls and pillars, was with 

.:nted hieroglyphics and 1. 
parable 1 by m 

whole buildii -I man's 

the ino^t 111 

I of all those wondrous works, which were really 

■ 
:.d pillared halls, embellished with par 

1 with the u:: I finish. 1 

wot, 1 in< hide < olossal il 

■ mi the • 
tern] I . that th' 

I I 
in a reign 

I withal ' 

and ' 1 irly in In 

by ii 

• il <.f the < ountrj 



12 A History of the World 

Memphis, and it was behind its walls that the Egyptian king, from 
lack of courage, remained secure, while his forces, after a desperate 
battle of six hours' duration, inflicted a severe defeat on the con- 
federates, and compelled them to quit the land. The monarch, on 
the monuments, took to himself the whole credit of the victory. 
Menephthah, the " Pharaoh " of the Exodus, was soon afterwards 
involved in the quarrel with Moses which led to results so direful 
for his people in the plagues and in the destruction of the pursuing 
force of chariots and horsemen in the waters of the Red Sea. 

Ramessu or Ramesses III. (i 269-1 244 B.C.), coming to the 
throne after a period of civil war and anarchy, had a reign made 
glorious by successes against the Bedouins on the north-east, the 
Libyans to the north-west, and a vast confederacy of foes from Italy 
and Greece who came against Egypt with naval and military forces 
by way of Syria and Palestine. Ramesses met them near the 
eastern mouths of the Nile, and defeated them utterly in several 
actions by land and water. He followed up this by an invasion 
of Syria, and then returned, after asserting his power, to build, to 
plant the country with trees, and to extend trade with Arabia and 
Ethiopia by way of the Red Sea. A long period of material, moral, 
and artistic decline followed under the Ramessids, ten sovereigns of 
the name of Ramesses. 

In the year 1091 a new dynasty came to the throne in the 
person of Her-hor, high-priest of Amnion at Thebes. The seat of 
government was placed at Tanis, in the Delta, whence they are 
called the " Tanite kings." During part of this period David and 
Solomon were reigning in Palestine and Syria, and we find the 
wise king's subjects trading with Egypt for chariots and horses, and 
hjmself marrying an Egyptian princess. The plan of Solomon's 
Temple, with the two pillars "Jachin" and "Boaz" in place of 
obelisks, was inspired by Egyptian models. 

In 961 an official of Semitic race gained royal power. This was 
Sheshonk, the " Shishak " of Scripture, who gave a friendly reception 
at his court to Jeroboam, afterwards king of Israel, and in his interest 
invaded Judah with a force of chariots, horse, and foot. His advance 
to Jerusalem was a mere triumphal march, and he retired after plunder- 
ing the Temple and the palace, leaving Rehoboam on the throne 
as a prince tributary to Egyptian monarchs. In another campaign 
he captured for Jeroboam certain Levitical cities hostile to the king 
of Israel, and was virtually master as far as Galilee, and from the 
Mediterranean to the Syrian Desert. There was, in later days, 



The Egyptians 13 

further warfare between the Jews and Egypt. Asa, the grandson 
of Rehoboam, defeated an Egyptian army with great slaughter, and 
re-established the independence of Judah, putting an end for three 
centuries to Egyptian hopes of Asiatic dominion. Disintegration 
of the monarchy began, and Egypt was divided into a number ot 
principalities, with rival dynasties at Tanis, Memphis, Thebes, and 
other cities. Conquest by the Ethiopians followed in due course. 
In 730 B.C. Shabak or Sabaco subdued the country, and the Ethio- 
pians, adopting the old religion of the land and repairing the 
temples, were in possession for about 60 years. During this time 
Egyptian and Assyrian armies met in Philistia, and the defeat 
of the African forces, in 720 and in 701, left Egypt exposed to 
Assyrian attacks. In 672 Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, the 
king of Assyria who had warred with Hezekiah, invaded Egypt 
with a great host, completely defeated the forces of Tehrak or 
Tirhaka, and ended the rule of the Ethiopian kings by overrunning 
the country from the Mediterranean to the First Cataract. The 
Assyrian conqueror divided the land into 20 districts, each with 
its governor and an Assyrian garrison in the capital town. Several 
attempts to re-establish Ethiopian power failed, and the end of 
olden Egypt seemed to have arrived. 

A revival, however, was to come. Psamatik or Psammitichus I., 
a man of Libyan race, ruler of one of the principalities, obtained 
from Gyges, king of Lydia, a strong force of Ionians and Carians, 
proclaimed himself king of all Egypt, crushed in battle the other 
petty princes, and met with no opposition from Assyria, then fully 
engaged with Asiatic foes. This energetic rebel thus became sole 
and absolute monarch of the country, from the mouths of the Nile 
to Elephantine, in 'B.C. 653, and held sway for over 40 years. His 
capital was fixed at Sais, in the Delta, and the new ruler strengthened 
his position by forming permanent camps of the foreign mercenaries, 
and by marrying a princess of one of the former dynasties. He 
then set to work to raise the country from its ruined condition, 
repairing canals and roads, encouraging tillage, reviving the arts, 
and throwing open Egypt, for the first time in her history, to the 
ability and enterprise of foreigners. Greeks came in and settled 
in the Delta, and commerce between Egypt and Greece arose. 

The son of Psamatik, Neco or Neku, beginning his reign in 
610, showed his nautical enterprise by an endeavour, foiled by 
excessive loss of life among the labourers, to reopen the canal, then 
silted-up by Nile mud and desert sand, which had been made by 



14 A History of the World 

Seti I. and Ramesses II. between the Nile and the Red Sea. His 
object was to afford communication between the two fleets of 
triremes which, by the aid of Greek workmen, he had built on the 
Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Under his auspices, Phoenician 
mariners sailed round Africa from the Red Sea, by the " Cape of 
Storms," as it was afterwards called, and the Straits of Gibraltar 
(" Pillars of Hercules ") to the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, which 
they reached in the third year, after the most remarkable and daring 
maritime exploit of ancient times. This energetic monarch next 
turned his attention to Syria and adjacent countries, and, defeating 
Josiah, king of Judah, at Megiddo, conquered Palestine, carrying 
off Josiah's second son, Jehoahaz, as a hostage, and leaving the 
eldest son, Jehoiakim, at Jerusalem as a tributary ruler. Three 
years later, in 605 B.C. the Egyptian army was utterly defeated 
at Karkhemish, on the Euphrates, by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; 
and thus for ever ended Egyptian hopes of empire in Asia. 

His successors, Psamatik II. and Apries or Hophra, warred with 
the Ethiopians and with Nebuchadnezzar, and from 570 to 526 we 
find Aahmes or Amasis ruling Egypt as a tributary king under 
Babylon. Material prosperity was great in this time of political 
decline. Agriculture prospered through the regularity of the over- 
flow of the bountiful river, and sculptors, painters, and builders of 
every class flourished under a ruler who was a lavish patron of 
Egyptian art in every form. 

The country of conservatism and isolation now came under the 
powerful influence of the Greek progressive spirit, and Ancient 
Egypt's dissolution was hastened by the introduction of foreign 
elements. Amasis, at the close of his reign, rashly provoked the 
new great empire of Persia by an attack on Cyprus, and his son, 
Psamatik III., was totally defeated at Pelusium by the troops of 
Cambyses. This event, in 525 B.C., made Egypt nominally a 
Persian province, whose history was chequered by desperate revolts 
against Persian monarchs. It was about 450 B.C. that Herodotus 
visited Egypt to obtain the information embodied in the Second 
Book of his immortal work. As Persia declined in power, Egypt, 
whose tributary kings had armies of Greek mercenaries, was for 
long periods practically free from control, and in 375 B.C. Artaxerxes 
Mnemon of Persia, having hired a large force of Greeks under the 
Athenian general Iphicrates, wholly failed in an effort to re-establish 
Persian power. The successful Egyptian ruler, Nectanebo, was 
regarded by his subjects as a hero and a demigod, and his reign 



The Egyptians 15 

was marked by an artistic revival of which the British Museum 
contains proofs in two small obelisks of black granite exquisitely 
finished, and in the very beautiful sarcophagus prepared for 
Nectanebo himself. Under his successors the country was troubled 
by civil war and by unsuccessful revolt against Persia, ending in 
340 B.C. with absolute subjugation. 

An account of Ancient Egyptian civilisation must be sought 
elsewhere. The history has shown the marvellous precocity of this 
Hamite people in working out for themselves a full development of 
civil and military organisation, accompanied by artistic excellence 
of the highest order in several departments. Their religion consisted 
in the worship of personified forces of nature — the rising sun, the 
overflow of the Nile, Isis the earth, wife of Osiris the creative power 
— and of many other members of a Pantheon largely made up of 
deities derived from local cults. At Memphis, great reverence was 
shown to Ptah, the first creator, chief of the gods. There was kept 
the sacred bull Hapi or Apis, believed to be an incarnation of the 
deity. At Thebes, we find the worship of Amnion (Amun), the god 
of heaven ; and Ra, reverenced at Heliopolis or On', represented the 
power of deity embodied in the sun. The religious regard paid to 
animals is well known. The priests and educated people were 
believers in one God, whom the sacred books, known only to the 
hierarchy and to certain initiated persons, describe in terms worthy 
of the Being revered by the most enlightened monotheists of all 
times. The universal belief included the tenets of immortality of the 
soul; judgment after death; transmigrations; the final annihilat'ion 
of the hopelessly wicked, and the ultimate absorption of the good 
into the eternal Deity. The government was that of a despotic 
monarch, much influenced by the priests, regarded by the people 
as a god incarnate, to be approached and addressed with abject 
reverence. There were strongly marked social divisions, but no 
castes in the Hindu sense, as has been wrongly supposed. The 
large class of nobles were chiefly great landowners living on their 
estates, with a vast body of dependents, servants, artisans, and 
labourers of various kinds. The priests, richly endowed with land, 
were very powerful. A numerous official class held posts at court 
and throughout the land, commanding also, as occasion needed, in 
aimies and fleets. A favourable feature of the social system is 
shown in the fact that a lad of the lowest class, the son of a labourer 
on the soil or of an artisan, sat on the same bench at the public 
school with the son of the noble landowner, and might, by adopting 



1 6 A History of the World 

the literary life, arrive at official employment, and advance by merit 
to the highest post in the empire. Nothing in Ancient Egypt more 
warmly commends itself to the most enlightened modern feeling 
than the high position assigned to woman. Women were never 
secluded from the world, as in some Oriental countries. They 
shared in the festivities of social life ; they had their place in 
religious processions and the ritual of the temple-worship. The 
Egyptian wife was the associate of her husband, under his rule, but 
never a mere toy or drudge. She was the manager of the household, 
the guardian of the children in their early years, and the confidential 
friend of her " lord and master."' 



Chapter II. — Chaldeo-Babylonian Empire. 

The discoveries of monuments and deciphering of inscriptions in 
recent years have revealed to the world the fact that the country 
called Chaldea or Babylonia possessed a civilisation at least as old 
as that of Egypt. The seat of this civilisation was the low alluvial 
region lying between the Tigris and the Euphrates in their lower 
course, extending from about 550 miles above the mouth to the 
shore of the Persian Gulf. The Assyrian inscriptions call Babylonia 
" Babilu " ; in the Hebrew Scriptures the country is Shinar, Babel, 
and " the land of the Chaldees." The territory is also known as 
" Lower Mesopotamia," a perfectly flat country which is now but 
a vast pestilential swamp, covered in ancient times, through efficient 
drainage, with rich pastures and fields of wheat. The earliest known 
inhabitants of the region were of Turanian or non-Caucasian race, 
people with a Tartar type of features, who came from the mountains 
to the north-east, whence the name of one part of this population, 
Accadai or "mountaineers." Along with the "people of Accad " 
we have also the " people of Shumir," of the same stock, Shumir 
being southern or lower Chaldea, towards and around the Persian 
Gulf, the "land of Shinar" in Genesis, and Accad being northern or 
upper Chaldea. These Shumiro-Accadians brought with them from 
their original home the arts of writing and of working metals, and 
probably were the first to dig the canals needed in the northern 
parts for irrigation, and in the south for drainage, and to make 
bricks and construct buildings. Their religion, as revealed to us 
by a very large collection of prayers, invocations, and other sacred 
writings, may be fairly regarded as the most primitive in the world. 



Babylonian Empi i - 

in I Mi 
■ 
late 

I the universe with 

icr in rank an 

■ 
. . ral harm to m.inkii. 

the neth 
1. Thei 
inishment her ry and magic, for 

■ 

hiel 
. and the Spirit of 
lirit, Mil.- 
n his midda) 
of truth and : Gibil, the god of fire, 

i an 
»tant in i thou who mixest tin 

hymn expi • thou who p 

an mil r< n to bronze, the 

the 

I of the dutj 
urdon. - .ni' tion and 

me of the hymns 
• 

Shumiro 
■ 

H 
and a 

- 



1 8 A History of the World 

of nature, and Bel-Merodach became the great national god. The 
religion was one common to most Semitic races, a worship of the 
heavenly bodies, and the priesthood were a very powerful and im- 
portant body, professors of the superstition called astrology, in 
which the Chaldeans devoutly believed. In every great city there 
was a temple with its priests, its observatory, and its library. The 
college of priests held sway over the city and its district, until the 
monarchy of a priest-king arose, limited in power by his priestly 
colleagues, in a theocratic form of government. With a tendency 
towards monotheism, in the dim perception of one supreme ruler of 
the universe, the practical polytheism of the country had its gods 
and goddesses, often related as husband and wife, representing 
Heaven, Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the planet Venus, and other 
powers, each great city having its favourite deity. Thus Eridhu, 
the most southern city of Shumir, worshipped Ea, the Divine 
creative Intelligence ; Ur, the city whence Abram came forth, 
reverenced the Moon-god ; Larsam or Larsa, the " Ellasar " of 
Genesis, paid special homage to the Sun ; Erech honoured, in 
conjunction, Heaven and Earth ; the Sun and Moon had rival 
temples at Sippar, on the " Royal Canal," nearly parallel to the 
Euphrates, and at Agade, the " Accad " of Genesis, on the opposite 
bank of the canal. We may note that when the name of Agade 
died out, the two towns were regarded as virtually one, and formed 
the Biblical " Sepharvaim," or " the two Sippars." Babylon, 
meaning, in its Semitic name Babilu, " the Gate of God," was at 
first without a special deity, but afterwards worshipped its own 
chosen protector in Meridug, the mediator, or Maruduk (in Hebrew, 
Merodach), god of the planet Jupiter. We observe, lastly, that in 
the mixture of religion and so-called " science " practised by the 
Chaldeans, astrology was accompanied by the art of divination of 
future events from signs and omens, and by conjuring and sorcery 
or incantation. It was the existence of these three classes of " wise 
men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the priesthood — the 
star-gazers, the magicians, and the soothsayers or fortune-tellers — 
and their practice of these arts after the downfall, of the empire, 
that caused the name "Chaldean" to become the equivalent of 
wizard or magician, and handed down the belief in witchcraft, 
astrology, and fortune-telling to the peoples of modern days. On 
the other hand, we owe to the Chaldeo-Babylonians, in the way of 
astronomical and mathematical discovery and invention, certain 
useful matters still in full vogue. Among these we place the 



I Empire 

mil of the - 

liai ; 
• division of the day into h 
minutes, Th • iry month of 

I k«.-|>t holy a> dij and the very nam 

the H< 3 mite brethren of Am 

< 

i first - • • ' political history i> thi 

MiN or hi • Li 
at tli rgul, the "Calneh" <>f Genesis, and 

iut 2700 
of .1 powerful empire. 400 
mthem < un and 1 ! I>v 

in the land, 
turies m conl rally hostile, with 

ria, had I pita] at S 

I n) stock, coi 

nitea who ltd ame the rulii 

I .in 

1 .in ambitious and . Khudui r, the 

ted with three allied k 
ert into i 

Ian and the It was the n 

prompt heroism in pursuing the 
nd Ins j 

111. in who proved to 

II 
I 

mpire. His 1 

ill th.ir \ ■ 

1 1 

I 



20 A History of the World 

risen to power, captured the city of Babylon, and then, for 
hundreds of years more, the Chaldeo-Babylonian empire was 
sometimes tributary to, sometimes independent of, the Assyrian 
monarchs. In 747 d.c. Nabonassar became king and waged war 
with the Assyrians, and in 729, under one of his successors, placed 
on the throne by a popular revolt, Babylonia was conquered by 
Tiglath-pileser III. of Assyria. A few years later revolt made the 
country again independent under king Merodach-baladan II., a 
very popular ruler, but in 704 he was driven out by Sennacherib, 
and the country was for many years in charge of Assyrian viceroys. 
In 625, on the breaking-up of the Assyrian power, a new Babylonian 
empire arose under Nabopolassar, a successful general. In 604 
Babylonia came under the rule of his son Nebuchadnezzar, one 
of the greatest sovereigns of all Chaldean history, who ruled for 
43 years, during which he recovered lost territory, enlarged and 
adorned Babylon, restored temples and other chief buildings 
throughout the land ; warred victoriously, as we have seen, with 
Necho of Egypt ; and captured and, finally, destroyed Jerusalem and 
carried off the Jews as prisoners to Chaldea. This last event 
occurred in 588. The exploits of Nebuchadnezzar also include the 
conquest of Syria and the capture of Tyre, the construction of a 
bridge over the Euphrates, and the creation of the famous " hanging 
gardens " at Babylon, which were terraced pleasure-grounds, wrongly 
ascribed to the half-fabulous Semiramis. His period of rule was a 
last long blaze of glory for the empire Nebuchadnezzar, whose 
name appears on nearly all the inscribed bricks, cylinders, and 
tablets found by explorers in the Babylonian mounds, had no great 
successor. In 556 the throne was usurped by an energetic prince, 
son of a " chief seer," named Nabu-naid or Nabonidus, who caused 
a general revolt, in the 17th year of his reign, by neglect of regal 
and religious duties, which he left to his son and co-ruler, the 
dissolute Belshazzar. The advancing army of Cyrus, king of Persia, 
could not be resisted, and in 538 Babylonia became a province of 
the great new empire. 

We have little space for any further notice of Chaldeo-Babylonian 
civilisation, largely revealed in recent years by the discovery, in the 
great mounds, of many thousands of inscribed tablets relating to 
every phase of the private daily life of a luxurious and artistic 
people, and containing most varied literary matter. The brick-books 
include works on magic, " spells concerning diseases of the head," 
epic and other poems, history, mythology, religious works, treatises 



The Assyrian Empire 21 

on law, geography, astronomy, and astrology ; proverbs, fables, and 
curious legendary lore. The spread of education is proved by the 
directions given in tablets, showing students how to apply for the 
"bricks" they might require at the temple-schools and libraries- 
There was a regular judicial system, administered by judges sitting 
either in lha gates of the temple or at the great city -gate, basing 
decisions on carefully kept precedents. A considerable trade was 
carried on by caravans with surrounding countries, and by sea with 
Arabia. The country was famous for dyed cloth and embroidery, 
and specially for rich carpets inwoven with figures of strange animals 
and arabesques such as are seen on the Nineveh sculptures. 
The early Babylonian art includes good statuary, excellent in its 
anatomy, carved in very hard green and red stone ; bronze-work 
in plates and statuettes ; and gem-engraving of a high order on 
jasper, cornelian, chalcedony, crystal, onyx, and other valuable 
stones. Music is represented by the harp, pipe, and cymbals, as 
used at feasts and in religious ceremonies. The city of Babylon, 
so vast in area, according to the ancient authorities, was built, with 
streets at right angles, in the form of a square, on both sides 
of the Euphrates, connected by a roofed bridge of hewn stones 
clamped with iron. Its walls included fields, gardens, and woods, 
with space affording shelter to the country-folk during invasions. 



Chapter III. — The Assyrian Empire. 

The Assyrians, or "people of Asshur," of Semitic race, migrated 
at an early period from their homes in Accad, and about 1500 b.c. 
formed an independent power in northern Mesopotamia, in a region 
bounded on the north by the highlands of Armenia, on the east by 
Media, on the south by Babylonia and Susiana, and on the west by 
the Euphrates. The territory, in its greatest extent, was 350 miles in 
length, and from 170 to 300 miles broad, being somewhat larger than 
modern Prussia. The wonderful fertility of the country was well suited 
for the support of a great population, and the new empire soon 
became one formidable to neighbouring nations. The earliest brick- 
inscriptions found at Asshur, the ancient capital, give the rulers 
the Accadian title of Patesi, or " high-priest." With a perception 
of the Divine Unity, the Assyrians placed above all gods " Asshur," 
the supreme head, of the same name as their first great city and 
the whole land, while they adopted, in a large degree, the creed 
3 



22 A History of the World 

and religious ceremonies of the Babylonia whence they sprang. 
The Sun-god was a great object of reverence, and the morning and 
evening hymns in his honour are among the finest, specimens of 
Assyrian sacred literature. Marduk or Merodach, the " mediator 
between gods and men," " the protector of mankind," " the raiser 
of the dead," was an important deity, and to Nebo, the god of 
learning, all the libraries were dedicated, as " the wise god," " the 
enlarger of the mind." Nergal, the god of war and of death, " the 
great devourer," is represented by the famous winged lions, with 
stately turbaned and bearded human head, placed at the temple 
or palace gates, the huge figures to be seen in the British Museum. 
The literature and civilisation were almost identical with those of 
Babylonia, and need no further description. We may mention the 
discovery, in 1872, by the late George Smith of the British 
Museum, of a tablet containing an account of the Deluge closely 
resembling that in the book of Genesis, and the finding of cosmo- 
gonic legends almost identical in substance with the Hebrew story 
of the creation. 

Among the earliest fads of Assyrian history we find, about 
1450 B.C., the conclusion of a boundary treaty between Assyria 
and Babylonia. Shortly before 1300, Shalmaneser I. founded the 
great city Kalah as one of the capitals; this place was uncovered 
in modern days by Layard at Nimrud. The two older capitals, 
Asshur and Nineveh, were only a few miles away, to south and 
north, on or near to the same river Tigris. The rising nation 
seems to have first drawn the sword against the powerful Hittites, 
the people whom we have seen in conflict wiih the Egyptians, 
and one whose extent of power and empire has only lately been 
revealed by the ingenuity, industry, and zeal of Professor Sayce 
in deciphering their monuments. Their territory, at its greatest 
extent, reached from the frontiers of Egypt to the shores of the 
Bosphorus, and their empire, before it perished about 700 B.C., 
had endured for nearly 3,000 years. About 1280 an Assyrian 
king took Babylon, and had a signet-ring engraved with his 
name, Tukutti-nineb, and title, with an inscription noting the 
victory. He seems, however, to have been soon forced to relinquish 
his conquest, leaving behind him the ring, which the Babylonians 
kept in the royal treasury, whence it was carried off 600 years 
later, by a more effectual invader, Sennacherib, who recorded 
the fact and the ring's history in his annals. The old Assyrian 
empire reached its height of glory under Tiglath-pileser I., who 



The Assyrian Empire 23 

reigned from 11 20 to n 00. The cylinder recording some of his 
warlike exploits tells of conquests among the highlands around 
the upper Tigris and Euphrates, of vast slaughter, crowds of 
captives, and cities burned. The empire was, in fact, extended 
over all western Asia, to the shores of the Mediterranean, and from 
the Armenian mountains to the Persian Gulf. Chaldea was made 
a tributary state. The Hittites were defeated, with the capture 
of their stronghold Karkhemish, on the Euphrates, and the cities 
of northern Phoenicia paid homage to the great Assyrian monarch. 
This energetic ruler also zealously promoted works of peace in 
restoring ruined castles, rebuilding temples, assisting tillage, storing 
the royal granaries with corn, adorning the chief cities, and planting 
trees and vines. He was a " mighty hunter before the Lord," 
slaying lions and wild bulls with his own hand, as boastfully 
recorded on his cylinder. Then for nearly 200 years the history 
becomes, from lack of records, almost a blank, and it seems that 
Assyria sank into comparative weakness, even paying tribute to 
certain Armenian kings, at the time when the Hebrew kingdom 
was in its full splendour under David and Solomon. 

About 930 B.C. the veil is lifted, and we find a line of great 
warrior-kings beginning a career of fresh conquest. Asshurnazirpal, 
reigning from 884 to 860, records his brutal cruelty to conquered 
foes in campaigns to the north, south, and west, by which the old 
territory was recovered. It was in this period that the capital was 
removed from Asshur to Kalah, the modern Nimrud, about 20 
miles below Nineveh, but on the other (western) bank of the Tigris. 
His son Shalmaneser II. (860-824), whose annals are recorded on 
the famous Black Obelisk in the British Museum and on the slabs 
and bulls from his palace at Kalah, warred yearly for above 30 
years against allied Syrian kings and Ahab of Israel ; he received 
tribute from Tyre and Sidon, and from Jehu, king of Israel. The 
last years of his life were spent in building, repairing, and religious 
services. One of his architectural works was the completion of the 
great Ziggurat of the temple of Nineb (Nineveh), a stone pyramid 
j 00 feet in width and 200 in height. The word "Ziggurat" 
means " mountain peak," and is descriptive of the peculiar con- 
struction so called, made of several platforms piled one on the 
other, each square in shape and somewhat smaller than the one 
below. The topmost supported a small temple, and the pile was 
used as an observatory by the Chaldean sages. In the 8th 
century we have accounts of revolt at home and abroad, and then 



24 A History of the World 

in 745 B.C. the throne was usurped by a Babylonian who took the 
Assyrian title of Tiglath-pileser II., and was both a reviver of the 
empire in establishing a new form of administration and a great 
conqueror. He built up a great political system of rule, in becoming 
an organiser as well as a subduer, and in consolidating conquests to 
which his predecessors had given a mereiytributary character. This 
was a new phase in the history of western Asia. Campaigns were 
no longermere raids on a large scale, for plunder in the shape of 
captured men, women, children, animals, and other property in 
various forms, but they were undertaken and carried out with a 
definite political aim, and what was acquired in territory was firmly 
held. Annexation and annual revenue were now the objects, instead 
of the gloryof victory in battle and the consequent spoil. A strong 
centralised form of government arose. Conquered peoples became 
now the inhabitants of subject provinces, governed by Assyrian 
satraps or viceroys, and compelled to pay a fixed yearly revenue to 
the home-government. Turbulent leaders of the people in subjugated 
territory were deported to a safe place of detention, and bodies of 
colonists were planted in the new provinces. Commercial objects 
were kept well in view under this new system. The monarch aimed 
at gathering up into the hands of the Assyrians the control of 
commerce in western Asia, and the capture of Karkhemish, Arpad, 
Hamath, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, and Samaria secured the trade- 
route through Syria and brought in large regular sums to the national 
treasury. This energetic and enlightened monarch seems to have 
aimed at effecting a general fusion of races in his dominions by 
carrying away large numbers of women from conquered territory into 
the middle of Assyria, for the purpose of there marrying and settling 
them, with a view to a new generation of mixed origin which could 
be patriotically attached to Assyria alone. The sculptures show 
processions of these deported people, with flocks, herds, and house- 
hold goods, escorted by Assyrian soldiers. The places of the 
expatriated were taken, in the new territory, by colonists of Assyrian 
birth, or people of kindred race to the conquerors and loyal to the 
Assyrian crown. After making himself master of the west, Tiglath- 
pileser received the submission of Babylonia, and in 729 proclaimed 
himself " King of Shumir and Accad." 

His successor, Shalmaneser IV., had to deal with revolts, and, 
dying during a long siege of Tyre, was succeeded by an usurper in 
the person of Sargon, the "Tartan" or commander-in-chief of the 
army. This was the king (722-705) who captured Samaria and put 



The Assyrian Empire 25 

an end to the kingdom of Israel, and was constantly employed in 
wars of repression of revolted provinces. Merodach-baladan III., 
of Chaldea, was the chief foe of Assyria at this time, causing revolts 
by his intrigues in Syria and adjacent countries. After successful 
campaigns in the west and north and east, against Syrians, Hittites, 
Medians and Armenians, Sargon turned fiercely against the 
dangerous plotter, Merodach of Babylon. That prince fled to his 
capital by the sea, Dur Yakin, but he was followed thither by his 
foe, and Sargon's soldiers took the place at the first assault. 
Merodach's palace was despoiled, and he made a humble sub- 
mission. The city was "made a heap of," in the language of the 
inscriptions, and Sargon was proclaimed king of Babylon in 710 b.c. 
The splendid palace built for himself at his new capital city, Dur- 
Sharrukin ("city of Sargon"), about 15 miles north of Nineveh, 
but away from the Tigris, at the foot of the hills, is the one 
entombed in the mound of Khorsabad, excavated by M. Botta 
for the French Government in 1842. Some of the fine sculptures 
are now in the Louvre, at Paris. The structure, which is the best 
preserved of all the Assyrian ruins, was of the finest workmanship 
in every detail, and the extent, variety, and richness of the sculptures 
are almost beyond belief. Every scene of the royal builder's life 
is illustrated, every feature of the countries which he visited as a 
conqueror is portrayed. On the outer walls were 24 pairs of 
colossal bulls in high-relief, and the inner walls of the vast rooms 
display about two miles' length of sculptured slabs. The whole 
vast undertaking was completed within five years, a fact which 
proves the number of skilled hands which were at the command 
of this mighty Oriental monarch. Shortly after taking possession 
of this magnificent abode, Sargon was murdered there in 705 e.g., 
during a military revolt, and was succeeded by the Sennacherib who 
is so well known to us from the Biblical narrative. His reign 
(705-681) began with revolts in Babylon and Philistia, which he 
suppressed, and the king then warred with mountain-tribes in the 
Zagros range. His failure against Hezekiah, king of Judah, calls 
for no description, and we need only state that lack of detail in the 
inscriptions seems to confirm the Scripture account of a catastrophe, 
probably a pestilence, which swept away his forces. A great battle, 
a complete victory for the Assyrians, was fought in the south 
against the united forces of Elam and Babylon, and Sennacherib's 
vengeance on his hereditary foe was marked by the sacking of the 
city of Babylon, the carrying away of the signet-ring and of other 



26 A History of the World 

trophies formerly taken from Assyrian kings, the demolition of the 
temples and statues of the gods, and the general destruction of the 
place by the spade and pickaxe and by devouring fire. The end of 
this monarch was slaughter by his two elder sons as he was at 
prayer in a temple, the motive for this horrible parricide being 
jealousy of the favour shown to their younger brother Esarhaddon. 

This favourite son took possession of power, overcame his 
brothers and their supporter the king of Armenia, and then went 
to Nineveh, which had been rebuilt with the utmost splendour by 
Sennacherib, with a new palace of the greatest magnificence, cover- 
ing eight acres of ground, and adorned with the most lavish and 
realistic illustrations of the royal builder's life at home and abroad, 
in peace and war. Esarhaddon showed political wisdom in dividing 
his time and place of abode between Babylon, in the low country, 
as a winter residence, and Nineveh, near the mountains, as a summer 
domicile. The city of Babylon and its desecrated temples were 
restored. His expeditions for frontier warfare were varied by an 
invasion of Arabia, in which eight chieftains were slain, two of them 
women, with the capture and carrying off of their wealth and gods. 
In 673 the Assyrian king made his great march into Egypt, and 
ended the war there which had been in hand, with various issues, 
for three years. The reign of this monarch, who is described by 
modern historians as being " the noblest and most gracious figure " 
among Assyrian rulers, ended in 668 with the rare event of abdi- 
cation. His successor was his son Asshurbanipal V., the Greek 
" Sardanapalus " (668-626), under whom the storm began to arise 
which was to sweep away for ever the imposing fabric of Assyrian 
power. The Aryan peoples were coming to the front in the persons 
of the Medes, called " Madai " in Genesis and on the Assyrian 
monuments. Coming from the plateau of eastern Eran or Iran, 
they had, about the middle of the 9th century B.C., reached and 
occupied many of the valleys and outer slopes of the Zagros Mountains, 
some distance east of Assyria proper, and they were soon in collision, 
from time to time, with Assyrian forces sent to check their advance. 
This people were to have a chief share in the general revolt, to the 
west, the south, and the east of Assyria, which was to lay the giant 
power in the dust, combined with wearing attacks from a people to 
the far north, the Scyths or Scythians, as the Greeks called them, 
the Sakhi or Saki in the Asiatic name. These were, to some 
extent at least, Aryan nomads whose hordes had overrun the vast 
plains of what is now southern Russia. 



I ; ire 
irbanipal, 

him as a patron of lit rt, in wl n art 

•. through his 
nst the Ethiopian 
spelled from M 

n land of k ' it. 

the . [*hen Phi igain sul> I 

and • under Psamatik ended in I 

irbanipal had be< n ei 1 by 

It under his brother, the i Ion, who 

■ i i i of the Assyrian 

l tor the ' five 

I Sippara 

ted with men i rity. Then came 

ith the |" ■ I lam, ending in the capture and 

• • capita] Shushan and their other chief towns, and 
the d kingdom and a nation. 

.irbanipal, 

in triumph to Nineveh after the I and 

an • . . had the pleasure of being drawn in his 

ite kings and an An ftain. 
fail us foi n 

rtain that Asshurbanipal did not die before I we 

• whether he had or three fore the 
i iwnward i 

. il war I 

ame independent, 

[l 

it administered the death b 

rtish or i 
I ' 
with thu 

■ 

in t 1 

a n 

I ■ 



28 A History of the World 

upon Assyria by a judicious alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon, 
and their united forces advanced against Nineveh in 608. The 
Assyrian king Sarakos (by his Greek name) held out for two years 
of a siege concerning which we have no details, and then the great 
capital fell, and the Assyrian empire ended its course of conquest 
and splendour in irretrievable ruin. 



Chapter IV. — The Jews. 

The peculiar character and history and the persistent vitality of the 
Hebrew race have made them the most wonderful people in the 
world. This chosen people of God, as Christians hold them to 
have been, were never distinguished by numbers, nor by extent of 
empire. Nearly 4,000 years ago their great ancestor crossed the 
Euphrates and the Syrian Desert to Canaan. In these closing years 
of the 19th century we find them, in almost unmingled purity of 
blood and in their most ancient form of features, physical, intel- 
lectual, and moral, alive and flourishing in every part of the 
world — in central Asia and Africa, in every European capital, in 
New York, St. Louis, and Chicago. Apart from its religious import- 
ance, their literature is remarkable for originality and poetical power. 
Still marked by his old intensity of character, fierceness in hate and 
love, fervid genius, indomitable resolution in pursuing his aims, the 
Jew has attained in modern days eminence in every department of 
life — art, literature, science, statecraft, and money-making. The 
career of the Jews in their more ancient times may be very briefly 
dealt with, so familiar is it to all readers from their own sacred books. 
Their historical importance consists, of course, in the part which, 
through their literature, they played in the spread of religious truth — 
the conservation and conveyance to future ages of the moral and 
spiritual lessons which were developed and exalted into the Christian 
creed and practice. I Their God was one who, as the special deity of 
a family that became a nation, taught the unity of the godhead, 
issued the commands on which all true morality is based, founded 
spirit-worship in place of nature-worship, and, by preserving His people 
through all dangers, difficulties, and trials, enabled them to fulfil the 
mission entrusted to them, and to them alone, among the nations of 



the world. 1 We may here note that the word "Jews" comes from 
Yekudh/i, trie name given, after the Babylonish captivity, to the whole 
people, as chiefly belonging to the tribe of Judah, and that " Hebrews," 



The Je 

m and 
. which i>< really a national, not an individual, d< 

I ov< t the Euphrate i from 
did in 
Premising that the chroi 

uncertain, we note, in 

raham, then i '. iram, 

i " l'r of the < 

. called Israel after his wrestling 

the name being held 
I , p< rhaps m the 

and the sett • the 

"f numl ., in the 

en, <m the right the Pelusiac mouth of the 

• I 

nd the world. It gave th< 

1 <<( Vahveh 
iue>t of ( ' tnaan, the 
n of the country 
: Semitic Hebi ••• . the worshippei 

1 Hamil Lh there 

intcrman th the nal f the M ic 1 iw, 

vernment . in 

which the nation v. i under the immediati 

in the : 
the Tab 

In tin 

■ 

v 
muel, th( 



30 A History of the World 

greatest Hebrew since Moses, to choose for them a visible head 
in the form of an earthly representative king. The purely theocratic 
form of government, combined with that of a federal republic, 
was thus superseded by monarchy, a system which was a decided 
failure in the person of the first king, the brave, stately, wilful, 
partly insane Saul. He did effect something in the field against 
the heathen enemies of Israel, but died at last by his own hand 
after defeat in battle with the Philistines. 

We observe that the prophetic order arose at this time and 
gained great influence in the state, first as advisers of the civil 
rulers, and then as a class of men who took charge of the religious 
destinies of the nation, and expounded the will and purposes of 
God by word and in their writings. A great event came in the 
accession of David, progenitor of a line of kings, and of the 
promised Messiah. His reign of 40 years, 7 years in Hebron 
over Judah alone and 33 years at Jerusalem over the whole 
nation, covers the time when the Jews may be fairly said to have 
established an empire. At this time also Jerusalem became the 
great and holy city of the Jewish race, the centre of both the 
national and the religious life of the people. With Joab as his 
commander-in-chief, David extended his sway over the whole of 
Palestine, ruling from the north-east end of the Red Sea to 
Damascus, and making many surrounding peoples tributary. The 
reign of Solomon, also one of 40 years, was made specially 
notable by the erection of the first magnificent temple, which had a 
great influence in the elevation and purification of the Jewish ritual, 
and in making the national sentiment an unrivalled combination of 
religion and patriotism. The history of the Jews at this time is 
entirely peaceful. Lucrative trade was carried on with Phoenicia, 
Egypt, Arabia, and probably with India and Ceylon. The arts of 
music, poetry, and architecture were cultivated, and it appears to be 
the golden age of Jewish history. A grievous falling-off was to 
come. The people suffered from heavy taxation due to the lavish 
expenditure of their sovereign. The wise man became in hi? 
closing years an ordinary voluptuous and idolatrous Oriental despot, 
and his death was the signal for political rupture. The kingdom 
was divided into that of Judah, including the tribes of Judah, 
Simeon, and a part of Benjamin with the Levites, and that of 
Israel to the north, including the other tribes, with the capital 
firstly at Sichem and later at Samaria and Jezreel. 

We need enter into few particulars of the history of the two 



The Jews 31 

separate kingdoms, generally friendly with each other, sometimes 
at war. The annals of the kingdom of Israel present us with a 
series of dynasties succeeding each other by assassination, and of 
wickedness and idolatry in the monarchs and people, vainly de- 
nounced by the prophets of the Lord. The more pious portion 
of the people of Israel were disaffected, and went up to Jerusalem 
to worship, in scorn of the two calves of gold set up at Dan and 
Bethel. Among all the royalty of this period and kingdom, Ahab 
and Jezebel, the Tyrian princess, his wife, are conspicuous for 
wickedness, and Elijah and Elisha as the prophets of God. The 
land went down to ruin, and, after being for some time tributary 
to the kings of Assyria, the kingdom of Israel perished, as we have 
seen, when Samaria, in 722 B.C., was captured by Sargon, and a 
large part of the people were carried off and settled in Assyria and 
Media. Their place was supplied by colonists from beyond the 
Euphrates, and it was from the mingling and intermarrying of these 
with the remnant of the Israelites that the people called Samaritans 
was formed. 

The history of Judah presents, upon the whole, a more 
favourable spectacle. Wickedness and idolatry were again and 
again combated and checked by kings who were zealous reformers 
and restorers of the national worship. The country was much 
harassed by foreign invaders, as under Rehoboam by Shishak of 
Egypt, under Asa by " Zerah the Ethiopian," under the powerful 
Jehoshaphat (873-848) by the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites, 
and, as we have seen, by the Assyrians under Sennacherib. The 
Temple was often robbed of its wealth in gold and silver to buy off 
invasion or to pay tribute to foreign foes. A remarkable episode 
was the usurpation of Athaliah (843-837), daughter of Ahab and 
Jezebel, and wife of Jehoram (848-844), son of Jehoshaphat. She 
seized supreme power in Jerusalem, and put to death her own grand- 
children in order to destroy the line of David ; but one of the stock, 
Joash, was wonderfully preserved, and brought up secretly in the 
Temple. This wicked woman introduced the worship of Baal, and 
was then overthrown and put to death by Jehoiada the high -priest, 
who placed Joash on his ancestral throne. The prophet Isaiah 
flourished in the latter half of the 8th century B.C., under Ahaz 
and Hezekiah, the latter of whom was one of the greatest reformers, 
wielding considerable influence over the kingdom of Israel. His 
son Manasseh turned the Temple of Jehovah into a shrine of Astarte, 
the Phoenician goddess, and sacrificed to Baal and Moloch. Carried 



32 A History of the World 

captive to Babylon, he repented and was restored to his throne. 
The last of the pious kings was Josiah, in whose reign the prophet 
Jeremiah came forward against idolatry, and the worship of Jehovah 
was restored, according to the book of the Law of Moses discovered 
in the Temple. The kingdom went rapidly to ruin after the death 
of Josiah in battle with Necho of Egypt at Megiddo (609 B.C.). The 
Babylonians became virtual masters of the country. Jehoiachin was 
carried away into captivity with many of his people in 597, and 
finally, in 588, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took and destroyed 
Jerusalem in the day of king Zedekiah, and the remnant of the 
people of Judah were carried off into the so-called " 70 years' 
captivity " in Babylonia, a period which is only correct if estimated 
from the capture of Jerusalem, in the reign of Jehoiakim, in 606. 

The prophet Ezekiel, who was one of the captives, gives some 
account of the condition of affairs in this period of bondage, during 
which the people were so kindly treated that only those of the lowest 
class returned along with the priests and Levites. We note that the 
Israelites, the " Ten Tribes " or " Lost Tribes," exiled nearly a 
century and a half before, never returned at all, and their subsequent 
fate has been always a matter of the wildest speculation. We learn 
from the book of Esther how large a number of Jews, remaining 
behind in the new abode on the return from captivity, were spread 
over the great Persian empire. Until about a.d. iooo Babylonia 
was a sort of " second land of Israel " to the people, and many 
import int changes in the Jewish worship and creed, including the 
belief in the immortality of the soul and in the resurrection of the 
dead, had their origin during the period of the captivity of Judah. 
It was in 536 b.c. that "Cyrus the Persian'' issued his decree for 
the return of the Jews to Palestine, when the foundations of the 
Second Temple were laid by Zerubbabel, of the royal line of David, 
the governor appointed by the king of Persia. Among the beneficial 
effects of the captivity may be noted the extinction of idolatry among 
the Jews, the establishment of a more spiritual worship, less reliance 
upon ceremonial, the practice of the regular reading of the Scriptures, 
by degrees collected into a " canon," in the ears of the people in the 
synagogues, and the rise of the scribes who expounded' the sacred 
writings and shared the respect paid to the priests and Levites. 
The observance of the Sabbath was firmly settled, and the use of 
private as well as public prayer had its place along with the rites 
and ceremonies of the older form of worship. The building of the 
Temple was interrupted for some years by the opposition of the 



The Jews 33 

Samaritans, who rejected all the sacred writings except the Penta- 
teuch, and it was not completed until 516. The wasted cities were 
rebuilt and repeopled, and the complete restoration of the divine 
worship and of the observance of the Law was effected under Ezra 
the priest, who headed a second migration in 458 B.C., and Nehemiah, 
who came to Judea as governor for the Persian king 13 years later. 

Down to the fall of the Persian empire the Jews lived peaceably 
under their own institutions as tributaries of that vast dominion, 
and the rule of affairs came into the hands of the high-priests. 
When Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian empire in 331, 
the conqueror allowed the Jews the free exercise of their religion, 
and they easily submitted to the new ruler, who enrolled some of 
them in his armies, and carried off large numbers of them and of 
the Samaritans to form a population for his newly founded city 
Alexandria. In 301 Ptolemy Soter of Egypt settled a large number 
of the people in Alexandria and Cyrene, and in Egypt the Jews 
attained special honour and prosperity, and thus aroused the jealous 
hatred which was embittered by the scornful assertion of their 
claims as the favoured people of God. This further dispersion had 
great influence in the spread of Judaism, and, in later days, of 
Christianity, and the Jews now, in close contact with Greek civilisa- 
tion, gained a new distinction in science and art, while the influence 
of Greek philosophy promoted the division into sects by which 
the Jews became distinguished in early Christian times. It was 
during this period that the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old 
Testament Scriptures was made for the use of the " hellenising " 
or Greek-speaking Jews now so widely spread abroad in western 
Asia and north-eastern Africa. The Jews of Palestine, after being 
well treated both under Syrian and Egyptian rule for a century and 
a half, fell under trouble when Antiochus IV. succeeded to his 
father's throne in Syria. There were rival Syrian and Egyptian 
parties, and amid civil dissension the high-priesthood was degraded 
by becoming an office due to bribery and intrigue, one holder 
of which paid homage to idolatry in sending offerings to the Tyrian 
Hercules. This Antiochus, surnamed " Epiphanes " (the Illustrious), 
a title sarcastically changed by his contemporaries into " Epimanes " 
(the Madman), attacked Judea in 170, stormed the city of Jerusalem 
with a great and wanton slaughter of both sexes and all ages, and 
then deliberately set about the task of forcing the Jews into 
paganism. The " Holy of Holies " in the Temple was profaned by 
a sprinkling of swine's broth, the sacred vessels were carried off, the 



34 A History of the World 

holy building was dedicated to the Greek deity Zeus Olympius. 
In every village idol-altars arose, and those who adhered to the 
faith of their fathers were forced to eat swine's flesh or die. In this 
awful time of trial the Jewish character, on the whole, shone forth 
brightly. There were some who yielded, many who fled into other 
lands, but there were far more who boldly faced martyrdom. 

At last some great deliverers arose in the heroic family of the 
Maccabees. A priest named Mattathias had five sons, John, Simon, 
Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan. The family name was Asmonaeus, 
and the glorious title of " Maccabees " came from that bestowed 
on the most distinguished son, Judas, styled " Maccabaeus," from 
Makkabi — connected with the word " Maccab," a hammer, like the 
cognomen of the great Frank warrior, Charles " Martel," the 
" pounder " of the Saracens in after-time. The father and family 
had retired to Modin, a small place between Jerusalem and Joppa, 
there to mourn in solitude over the existing misery. When a Syrian 
officer came and demanded that he should offer sacrifice to idols, 
offering bribes of money and high office, Mattathias refused in the 
boldest terms, and slew with his own hand an apostate Jew at the 
altar, with the royal envoy and some of his men. He and his sons 
then retired to the hills, and raised a standard of rebellion which 
soon had many followers. The worship of Jehovah was quickly 
restored in many places, and the pagan altars were destroyed. The 
father died in 166, bequeathing the cause specially to his sons 
Simon as a wise counsellor, and Judas as the chief captain in 
battle. Nobly did these men fulfil their trust. Judas became even 
as Joshua and Jephthah, Gideon and Samson, of the olden days. 
He defeated again and again, by stratagem and by the most 
desperate fighting, great armies of Antiochus and his two successors, 
being well supported by his brethren, and in 164 became master of 
the capital, where he purified the Temple and restored the service of 
the One God of the Jews. Three years later Judas Maccabaeus 
laid down his life, and won immortal fame as one of the world's 
greatest champions of freedom, in fighting against a vastly superior 
force of Greek veterans, skilfully led for the king of Syria, in 
Galilee. He had already become high-priest, and in that ruling 
capacity he had sent envoys to the Senate at Rome soliciting aid 
in his struggle. It is likely that then, for the first time, the Roman 
senators beheld the face of the Jews whom the Roman power was 
to subdue. Eleazar and John also died in action, and the burden 
of the contest came upon the surviving brethren, Simon and Jonathan. 



35 

■ time • of tyranny and 

more Jewish m.irt\rs died. Then Jonathan, who had renewed the 
ime high nd instituted th< ' 

a, Imt lie perished l>y Syrian 

the aim ite masi 

i had public documi ning " In the 

n 1 < hief <>f t:. 
>n was trea 1 by hi >n-in law, 

• 1 to hi> power. Then John 1 i 
ruled from 135 to 105, I. implete n 

rth, and Idumea to t . and, in 

with the Rom all the territory ruled 

by I »-i\ 1. !. i under Ins in 

ned rule. It was in hi 
rival - line establish 

ie name implies, in then 

1 them, and 

the traditional Law w was believed to I 

in addition t<> the writ- . ••. The 

ilitical in. 

>f the lawyers and they 

rt and vital part of the Jewis The 

formed I <>f the Z 

. 
f theii denied the traditional 

. the nnn. ;l, and th and 

the Pentateuch alone as their rule of life. 

in number than the Phai n in 

i 

• ill of the nation. 
ie with the I 

■ 

: I 

i : 



1,6 A History of the World 

of Jewish manners and ideas, and a strong supporter of the Roman 
party. Styled "Herod the Great" among the various Herods of 
his dynasty, he held the office of " tetrarch " of Judea, or "governor 
of the fourth part," — the country being now divided into Judea, with 
its capital at Jerusalem ; Samaria, with Samaria and Sichem as chief 
towns ; Galilrea, with Nazareth, Capernaum, and Cana ; and Peroea, 
the district east of Jordan. This friend of Antony was politic 
enough to secure the favour of his successful rival Octavianus or 
Augustus, and he reigned in full power until his death in the year 
of Christ's birth, which was probably the year 4 prior to the 
Christian era, as erroneously reckoned. This Herod was a man of 
great architectural undertakings, rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem 
in Grseco-Roman style ; the city of Samaria, with a new temple 
there on Mount Gerizim, in place of the one destroyed by John 
Hyrcanus ; and the city of Coesarea. He was not less distinguished 
by atrocious cruelties, put in practice against all who incurred his 
lightest suspicion. Among his victims were his wife Mariamne and 
his and her two sons, countless persons who opposed and rebelled 
against his Roman policy, and the " Innocents " of Bethlehem. 
This last event occurred just after his murder of his own eldest son 
Antipater and just before his own death. Herod's son Antipas, 
born of a Samaritan woman, one of the tyrant's ten wives, became 
double tetrarch of Galilee and Pera;a. It was he who put John the 
Baptist to death for his rebuke of the marriage with Herodias, his 
half-brother Philip's wife, and who had Jesus sent before him by 
Pilate. He finally died in exile at Lugdunum (Lyo?i), whither he 
was sent by the Roman emperor. Herod Agrippa I., grandson of 
Herod the Great, through his son Aristobulus, put to death by his 
father, was brought up at Rome, and became, under the emperor 
Claudius, king of all Judea in a.d. 41. It was he who, in 
persecuting the Christians, put the apostle James to death, and 
died at Csesarea, "eaten of worms," in a.d. 44. Claudius then 
re-changed the kingdom into a Roman province, but in a.d. 53 
Herod Agrippa II., son of the first Agrippa, was made sovereign by 
the same emperor over most of his father's territory. It was before 
this king that Paul made his memorable defence. This last of the 
Herods retired to Rome on the destruction of the Jewish nationality, 
and there died. 

In tracing the history of the chief Herods, made interesting and. 
important by their connection with events recorded in the New 
Testament, we have passed over matters now to be related, as 



The Jews 37 

leading up to the final catastrophe. A son of Herod the Great, 
Archelaus, became in 2 b.c. ruler, under Augustus, of Judea, 
Samaria, and Idumea. In ad. 7 he was deposed for his tyranny, 
and then Judea and Samaria became a Roman province under a 
"procurator," with his seat of government at Caesarea, subject to 
the prefect of Syria. In a.d. 26 Pontius Pilate held the office, and 
exercised it in a tyrannical way which made him very unpopular, and 
led straight to his cowardly crime in allowing the " Innocent One " 
to be sacrificed, in order that he might win back some favour with 
the Jews and keep them from accusing him at Rome. In a.d. 37 
he was banished to Vienne in southern Gaul, after his cruelties and 
rapacity had caused many outbreaks, and had culminated in the 
murder of many Samaritans on Mount Gerizim. It was Roman 
tyranny that caused the great and disastrous rebellion of the Jews. 
In a.d. 38 that mad monster, the emperor Caligula, issuing an 
edict for divine honours to be paid to himself, was steadfastly 
disobeyed by the Jews in every part of his vast dominions. Fright- 
ful massacres took place at Alexandria and in Judea, and all the 
efforts of Herod Agrippa I., under the emperor Claudius, to conciliate 
the people, failed against the determined hostility of the national 
party. In a.d. 41 the Jews received the rights of Roman citizenship, 
and this Herod strictly observed the Jewish law. After his death 
the land became a scene of confusion and misery. Governor after 
governor came and was removed. Lawlessness and fanaticism 
were rampant. Insurrections, robbery, and assassinations provoked 
reprisals in which the Roman procurators crucified by hundreds the 
banditti and the " zealots " who infested the land. Felix, who was 
procurator a.d. 53-60, the man denounced by Tacitus, in his scathing 
style, as " giving full license to his lust and his cruelty, and wielding 
the power of a king in the spirit of a slave," the man whom Paul 
made to tremble, " as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and 
judgment to come," was succeeded by Porcius Festus, who had 
at least the grace to admit the innocence of Paul. After him came 
some cruel procurators, and confusion became worse confounded 
amid the work of fanatical patriots, ruffianly freebooters, Jews and 
Samaritans, impostors and pretenders to magic ; the priesthood 
torn by fierce dissensions, the populace at daggers-drawn with the 
Roman soldiery, who were chiefly of Grasco-Syrian race. The 
end was close at hand. In vain did Agrippa II. strive to restore 
order and dissuade the national party from the suicidal step of 
open rebellion. The tyranny of Gessius Florus, procurator in 
4 



38 A History of the World 

a.d. 65, caused the Zealots, also styled Sicarii or Assassins, to revolt. 
A civil war ensued, in which the rebels won the day over their own 
countrymen, and then the sturdy old soldier, of Sabine birth, 
Vespasian, was sent by the emperor Nero to suppress the rebellion, 
which in 66 had involved Galilee and Samaria along with Judea 
in common cause against Rome. We need pursue the story no 
further. The struggle was one of hideous renown. The command 
relinquished by Vespasian on his accession as emperor in a.d. 69 
was assumed by his son Titus. Jotapata, in Galilee, had been taken 
after desperate fighting, and Jerusalem was invested at a time when 
the city was overcrowded by refugees from the country and by those 
who had come up to celebrate the Passover. A siege of several 
months, unsurpassed in history for its horrors, for valour, skill, 
and persistence in the assailants, for magnificent heroism and insane 
desperation in the defence, ended in the autumn of a.d. 70 with 
the storming and almost entire demolition of the city which was 
to the conquered people the centre of unity for their national life. 
According to their own historian, over 1,000,000 Jews had perished 
by the sword and by famine. The history of the Jews as a nation, 
independent or tributary, was at an end. 



Chapter V. — The Phoenicians and Carthaginians. 

The Phoenicians, as the greatest money-makers by commerce, and 
as the chief colonisers, of antiquity, may well command the interest 
and sympathy of all true Britons. They afford a striking instance, like 
Athens, Sparta, Carthage in the olden world, Venice, Genoa, Florence, 
and Portugal in mediaeval days, and Holland and Great Britain in 
modern times, of the insignificance of mere size of home-territory 
in enabling a people to play a great part in the world. The 
Phoenician land was, in area, little more than half the size of 
Yorkshire. The Phoenician people, by their enterprising character 
and their maritime, commercial, and naval achievements, won for 
themselves immortal renown. They called themselves and their 
territory Chna or Canaan ; the name bestowed by history, Phcenice 
for the country, Phoenices for the people, comes from the Greek 
phoenix, in one of its two chief meanings — the purple-red or crimson 
colour for which the dyers of the country were famous, and the 
beauteous date-palm which grew, and grows, upon its shore. The 
territory lay on the eastern border of the Mediterranean, a long 



The Phoenicians 39 

narrow tract, a far smaller Chili, between mountains and the sea, 
with Syria to the north and Palestine to the south. The coast-line 
was about 200 miles in length ; the average breadth of the country 
may have been 15 miles, varying from less than 2 in the south to 
over 20 in parts of the centre and towards the north. A marked 
diversity of surface and production was of great service for the 
development of a prosperous nation. The belt along the coast was 
composed of fine white siiicious sand, excellent for glass-making, 
and well suited for the date-palm. Inside this was a most fertile 
level region, the richest plains of which belonged, going from south 
to north, to Ake or Akko (Acre), Tyre, Sidon, Berytus (Beyrout), 
and, much farther north, Marathus. Here were gardens gay with 
the scarlet blooms of the pomegranate, orchards, and most productive 
corn-land. The plain is bounded on the east by low swelling hills, 
on which the mulberry, the olive, and the vine were cultivated in 
abundance. The Lebanon range, opposite the middle of the coast, 
stretches for 100 miles, with peaks exceeding 9,000 feet, snow-clad 
for eight months of the year. These mountains, and the more 
northern range called Bargylus, about 5,000 feet high, had forests 
of oaks, chestnuts, sycomores, terebinths, fir, and pine, Lebanon 
being distinguished by the noble cedars which have never lost their 
fame. This inexhaustible supply of timber fit for ship-building and 
for oars was of vast importance to the people of a country forced by 
nature, as it were, to the sea for a livelihood. The coast-line was 
not rich in natural harbours, though in some places headlands gave 
shelter, on either side, from prevailing winds, and some bays, like 
that of Acre, were almost land-locked. At other points, as at 
Aradus, in the north, and at Tyre and Sidon, islets on the coast gave 
protection to vessels, and the industry and skill of the people made 
excellent artificial harbours at all needful points by excavation of the 
sandy soil, and the construction of breakwaters. The mountains to 
the north and east were of great value, in the political history of 
Phoenicia, as barriers against invasion, and the position of the 
country, in the natural course of trade between the eastern and 
western worlds of those ages, marked it out as a most fit abode for 
those who aimed at commercial wealth. 

No records inform us exactly of how and when the Phoenicians 
first came to the land of Canaan. About 2000 B.C. Semitic 
immigrants from the east began to appear in the territory, and 
it is certain that for 1,000 years from the 14th century B.C. it 
was occupied by the people of Semitic race with whom we are 



40 A History of the World 

now dealing, closely resembling their neighbours, the Jews, in 
form and feature. Their character, like that of all the western 
Semites, was marked by pliability, intensity of purpose, capacity for 
toil along with love of luxurious ease, and great regard for religion 
and religious ideas. The temple was the centre of attraction in 
every city, the gifts of monarch and people were costly, and the 
same gods with the same rites became objects of worship in every 
place where colonies were founded. In the historical period, the 
religion had become degraded from an original monotheism with 
a highly spiritual conception of Deity into a polytheism in which 
the chief gods adored were Baal, a sun-god ; the goddess Ashtoreth 
or Astarte, specially reverenced at Sidon ; and Melkarth, said to 
mean " king of cities," a " Baal of Tyre." Adonis, properly Adonai 
(" my Lord ") was a special god at Byblus, and Moloch, the 
Ammonite god, was also Phoenician. The religious rites were 
marked by foul cruelty and vice, due to the superstitious desire of 
propitiating the gods by sacrifice of what parents naturally held 
most dear — the lives of children, and, worse still, the honour of 
daughters. All readers of the Old Testament are familiar with the 
"passing of sons and daughters through the fire to Moloch." They 
were literally burnt alive by being placed in the outstretched arms 
of a metal image within which a fire was kindled, and thence they 
rolled into the furnace, while their cries were drowned by the din 
of kettle-drums and flutes. The test-sacrifice to Baal, ordered 
by Elijah on Mount Carmel in the days of Ahab of Israel, shows 
us the priests, in their despair of an answer to their prayers, and 
stung by Elijah's mockery, offering their own blood by "cutting 
themselves after their manner with knives and lancets." 

It was, above all, the character of the Phoenicians to be thoroughly 
practical. They were poor, so far as we know, in speculative 
thought, literature, science, and art. As ship-builders, navigators, 
merchants, miners, weavers, dyers, workers in metal, and colonisers, 
they were unequalled in the ancient world. Their enterprise and 
daring as explorers were wonderful, as they faced the perils of 
unknown seas in reaching all parts of the Mediterranean, the 
Propomis (h'ea of Marmara), ar.d the Euxine or Black Sea ; in 
circumnavigating Africa, pushing out into the Atlantic, and in 
reaching Britain and, perhaps, the Baltic. Energetic, persevering, 
dexterous, unscrupulous, keen in all practical affairs, they were nor, 
as has been supposed, the inventors of an alphabet, but they showed 
their practical genius in simplifying and adapting to the uses of 



Ihe Phoenicians 41 

business the cumbrous multiplicity of earlier systems, and, discarding 
superfluous signs, they framed a real working alphabet, with a 
single definite character for each sound — an alphabet which, with 
slight changes, has been adopted by civilised nations from their day 
to this. 

The history begins with the occupation, at a very early date, 
of the sites of Sidon, Aradus, and other less important towns. 
The existence of Tyre came later, and Tripoli's, "ihe town of 
three cities," as the Greek name indicates, was' a colony of settlers 
from Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus. Gebal (called by the Greeks and 
Romans " Byblus "), Ake or Akko (Acre), Berytus (Bey rout), and 
Sarepta appear, with Tyre, in Egyptian inscriptions of the 14th 
century B.C. Sidon was the first of the independent townships or 
principalities which rose to the eminence shown by the allusions 
in the Homeric poems to her bowls of precious metal and her 
embroidered royal robes, and by her colonisation of Cyprus, the 
islands of the /Egean Sea, Malta, many places in Sicily, and of 
Utica and other points on the northern coast of Africa. Tyre 
became the leading city in the second period of Phoenician history, 
from the 13th to the 9th century, and founded colonies in Thasos, 
Thrace, and Bithynia ; at Hadrumetum, Hippo Regius, and Leptis 
Magna in Africa; at Carthage, in the same region ; and at Gadeira 
or Gades (Cadis), Malaca (Malaga), and other places in Spain. 
Tyre, Sidon, and the other Phoenician cities were never formed 
into a regular confederacy, but lived, for the most part, on friendly 
terms, and were at times ready to combine against any formidable 
common foe. The commerce of the towns was probably first 
carried on with Cyprus, Cilicia, and Egypt. Cyprus, " the copper- 
land," as its name indicates, was visited for the abundant metal 
which was combined with tin, in the proportion of about nine parts 
of the red to one of the white metal, to make the bronze that, in 
those days, before the general use of iron, was the chief material 
for all kinds of weapons, tools, and utensils. The need of tin took 
the Phoenicians first to southern Spain, the district called Tarshish 
or Tartessus, where it was found in small quantities, and then to 
the north-western corner of the Peninsula, where it was more 
plentiful. 

There is good reason to believe that the famous Cassiterides 
(" Tin Lands ") of Herodotus, formerly identified with the Scilly Isles 
and the coast of Cornwall, were really islets off the Spanish coast, 
near Vigo, and that the great traders of antiquity did not obtain 



42 A History of the World 

Cornish tin by a sea-route until a comparatively late day. The 
most precious thing for Tyre and Sidon and their sister-towns, but 
especially for Tyre, was the dye obtained from two species of 
shell-fish, molluscs in the form of mussels, each of which yielded 
but one small drop of the fluid. The mussels producing the best 
dye were found on the Phoenician coast, between Tyre and Mount 
Carmel, and the possession of this finest raw material, along 
with chemical skill in fixing the colour, and the brilliant sunlight 
which, as the dyeing was in operation, gave the utmost vividness 
to the tint, enabled the Tyrians to produce the magnificent crimson 
or purple fabrics of their own weaving, used for the adornment of 
the temples of the gods, and of kings and nobles and Roman 
senators. Very costly to the buyer, and defying the many attempts 
at imitation, these articles were manufactured on the Phoenician 
coast until about the 8th century of the Christian era. The 
Sidonians were famous for glass in the form of vases, bottles, 
drinking-cups, and bowls, in small sizes made by the blow-pipe, 
and the people of both cities were renowned for excellence in 
bronze-work. In addition to their extensive commerce by sea, in 
which they were the chief " carrying " people for many hundreds 
of years, the Phoenicians had a great land-traffic with Judah, Israel, 
Syria, Arabia, Assyria, Babylonia, Armenia, Asia Minor, and other 
parts of the East by means of caravans. The best description of 
the trade both by sea and land is given in that valuable historical 
document the 27th chapter of the prophet Ezekiel. 

Leaving this subject, we turn to a brief account of the historical 
events, which are of little importance compared with the part played 
by the Phoenicians in the work of civilisation. Like prudent traders, 
the people wished only to be let alone. They did not aim at 
founding an empire. They were always more ready to pay than 
to fight, and would submit to any tolerable tribute if their commerce 
and religion and manufactures were not disturbed. They hired 
out their war-galleys to more powerful peoples in the various 
contests for supreme dominion. When they were hard pressed 
by direct attack on their own coast, they showed their Semitic 
capacity for desperate resistance. The one great monarch was 
king Solomon's friend Hiram of Tyre, who reigned for 43 years 
in the nth century. He greatly enlarged and adorned his city, 
and his commercial alliance with the Jewish king led to a most 
lucrative trade from Solomon's port on the Red Sea, Ezion-geber, 
carried on by the Phoenicians with Ophir, in south-east Arabia, and 



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44 A History of the World 

During an interval of peace and repose Sidon was rebuilt and again 
flourished. 

The overthrow of the Persian empire by Alexander of Macedon 
brought with it the destruction of Tyre and the end of Phoenician 
nationality. After the defeat of Darius at Issus in 333 B.C., Aradus, 
Byblus (Gebal), and Sidon surrendered to the conqueror, but Tyre, 
irritated and alarmed by Alexander's declared intention of entering 
their island-city, resolved on resistance. One of the famous sieges 
of all history, extending over seven months, January to July, 332, 
now occurred. The other Phoenician cities were either passive 
or hostile to Tyre, and a Phoenician fleet aided Alexander in his 
arduous operations. There was fierce fighting by sea and land, 
and the resources of ingenuity and valour were taxed to the utmost 
on both sides. The great Macedonian only succeeded at last by 
filling up, with enormous labour for his men, the strait between 
the isle and the mainland, and then, with his engines, battering- 
rams, and catapults, making breaches at which, from ships provided 
with boarding-bridges thrown across and resting on the wall, he 
entered at the head of stormers chosen from his best troops. 
The defence, the most glorious event of Phoenician history, did 
not even then collapse. A desperate street-fight ensued, and did 
not end until the Macedonians had used the utmost efforts of 
disciplined rage. The carnage of the Tyrians in the assault is 
stated at 8, 000 ; 2,000 more, taken prisoners with arms in their 
hands, were crucified on the seashore in punishment for the 
massacre of Macedonian prisoners on the battlements during the 
siege. The women, children, and slaves were sold to the number 
of many thousands. Phoenicia then became a part of the empire 
of Alexander, and under his successors was a battle-ground, for 
possession of her territory, between the monarchs of Egypt and 
Syria. Tyre became again, in the course of 20 years from her 
ruin, a wealthy city. About 200 B.C. Phoenicia came under the 
Seleucid kings of Syria, and after the Roman conquest of that 
territory Tyre was one of Rome's "free cities," with municipal inde- 
pendence, a privilege shared with her by Tripolis and Sidon. 
During this period the Phoenician population became more and 
more " Graecised." The trade of Tyre and Sidon was still flourish- 
ing, and we take leave of the country at the time when a Tyrian 
Christian Church was established, and turn to the fortunes of Tyre's 
greatest colony. 

Carthage, the greatest of all Phoenician cities, filling a large 



The Carthaginians 45 

space in history through the momentous contest with Rome to be 
hereafter traced, was the last planted of all the African settlements. 
Its native name ICartaco, in Latin Carthago, meant " New City," 
like the Greek Neapolis {Naples), to distinguish it either from the 
Tyre whence the settlers came or from Utica, about 15 miles north- 
west, founded by Phoenicia nearly three centuries earlier. The 
place was in a small bay of the fine natural harbour now called the 
Bay of Tunis, from the city lying a little south-west of the site of 
ancient Carthage. The land about the city was fertile, and soon 
became rich, under Phoenician industry, in corn and wine and oil. 
The time of foundation may be assigned to about the middle of 
the 9th century B.C., but of the history we know nothing for some 
three centuries. In the latter part of the 6th century we have 
Carthage, in alliance with Etruria, then an independent and powerful 
state to the north of Rome, fighting a desperate naval battle with 
Phocaean (Greek) colonists in Corsica, who had become maritime 
freebooters dangerous to peaceful trade. The Phocoeans won the 
day, but at so heavy a cost that they abandoned their new settle- 
ment. A few years later, 509 B.C., a treaty was concluded between 
Rome and Carthage, binding each state to friendly commercial 
treatment of each other's subjects. Another treaty, after this time, 
excludes Roman traders from Africa and Sardinia, admitting them to 
Sicily and Carthage. We here see the growing power of the great 
Phoenician colony in that she controls much of the north African 
coast, and has dominion in Sardinia and part of Sicily. At the 
close of the 6th century, after Cambyses of Persia, in 525, had 
conquered Egypt and received the submission of the great cities 
of Cyrene and Barca, he wished to make an expedition against 
Carthage, but she was saved by the patriotic refusal of the Phoenicians, 
who owned and manned most of his ships, to assail their "children," 
the Carthaginians, to whom they were "bound by solemn oaths." 
We shall hereafter see the foundation of Greek colonies in Sicily, 
and these, at the time of the second invasion of Greece by Persia 
in 480 B.C., were attacked by Carthage. A great land-army of 
Phoenicians, Libyans, Corsicans, Sardinians, and of Iberians from 
the Phoenician dominions in Spain, was dispatched from Carthage 
on board a fleet which lost in a storm the vessels carrying the 
cavalry and the chariots. ' The rest arrived safely at Panormus 
(now Palermo), and besieged Himera, a Greek town to the east. 
There they were almost destroyed by the army of Gelon of Syracuse, 
the most powerful monarch in the island, who had hurried to the 



46 A History of the World 

defence of his countrymen. Nearly all the many hundreds of 
Carthaginian transports and the war-galleys were taken, and the city 
was filled with terror and sorrow. Gelon granted to Carthage hard 
terms of peace. A large sum of money was paid to the victor, and 
the vanquished had to build two temples at Carthage in honour 
of the Greek goddesses of Sicily. This disastrous expedition of 
Carthage had been undertaken in alliance with Xerxes of Persia, 
whose fleet was receiving at the same time a fatal blow at Salamis. 

Seventy years later, in 410, another great Carthaginian army was 
in Sicily for the purpose of aiding the people of Egesta against 
their neighbours at Selinus. That city was stormed, with great 
carnage, by the invaders, and their commander then turned against 
Himera, where his grandfather had perished in battle against Gelon 
of Syracuse. Men and ships from Syracuse aided the people of 
Himera, who made a gallant sortie, repelled at last with loss, 
and the place was taken and utterly destroyed. The Punic com- 
mander was received with delight and the highest honours at 
Carthage after this signal avenging of the former disaster. This 
success made the Carthaginians aim at complete mastery in the 
splendid and fertile island lying so near their shores. A powerful 
expedition was dispatched in 406, and Akragas (Agrigentum), on the 
southern coast of Sicily, was first assailed. Syracuse intervened 
in behalf of her sister-colony of Dorian Greeks, the second city 
of the island in power, splendour, and wealth, with noble archi- 
tecture, but after eight months' siege the city was quietly abandoned, 
and ship-loads of Greek artistic treasures in pictures and statues 
were sent home to Carthage. Gela, on the southern coast to the 
east of Akragas, and Kamarina, to the south-east again, met the 
same fate. The Carthaginian success was partly due to the con- 
nivance of Dionysius, " tyrant " or absolute ruler of Syracuse, who 
now made a treaty leaving Carthage in possession of the whole 
south coast of Sicily and of increased territories in the north. 
Grievous trouble came to the victors in a plague which, breaking 
out in Sicily, destroyed half their great army, and, carried by the 
survivors to Carthage, slew multitudes in the city and district. A 
few years later Dionysius, after strengthening the fortifications 
of Syracuse and preparing a fleet of great warships, quinqueremes 
and triremes, and devising the military engine called catapult, for 
hurling huge stones, went to war with Carthage. This occurred 
in 397, when Carthage was still suffering from the losses of her 
last Sicilian campaign. The Syracusan ruler promptly marched 



rhc Carthaginians 4~ 

ami lint 
tended him, and I 
with tin I ; i 

'1 in the capture of the place and a dreadful ma L'n 

then made a mi an I 

mament tut under the same general. 

' • Unci to the Si 
f I rose. 1 Punic 

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the I taken, and the n< \t 

■ 
midway from Messana to S ... .,, n _. 

■ undertaken. I Punic army, and th< n 

ended in the 
.: and retirement of the Cartha ntry. 

had then dominion <>\er only a small territory in the 

I he and the 

• ■ 
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n than hefore her :. 
- 

• l rinth, 
the : In two battles the < nians 

lition that they should 
I i I not 

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till tm 

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48 A History of the World 

as to give his troops no choice but to conquer or die, and made 
Tunis his headquarters. His force included Samnites, Etruscans, 
and Celts from Italy, and the Punic forces were defeated with the 
loss of their camp. Many African towns, including Utica, the 
largest next to Carthage, submitted or were taken, and the chief 
city saw herself almost destitute of subjects and allies. He was 
then recalled to Sicily by the state of his affairs, and left his son 
commanding in Africa. There the Carthaginians defeated the 
invaders, and Agathokles sped back to Africa. He was repelled 
in attacking the Punic camp; his army mutinied and put him in 
chains ; and in 307 his famous expedition, on his release by the 
troops, ended with his escape in a boat to Sicily, where he vented 
his rage in the destruction of the city of Segesta. By another 
reverse of fortune, due partly to his own unscrupulous cunning in 
winning over partisans, Agathokles became master of all Sicily, 
virtually king of the island, and another expedition which he had 
planned against Carthage was only prevented from sailing by his 
death in 289 B.C. The last dealings of Carthage in Sicily, before 
her contest with Rome, were with Pyrrhus, the renowned king 
of Epirus. After his victories in Italy, to be hereafter noticed, he 
crossed over to the island, was well received at Katane and Syracuse, 
whence the Carthaginian blockading fleet at once sailed away, and 
he became master of nearly the whole of Sicily. He was foiled, 
however, at the siege of the Punic stronghold Lilybaion, on the 
extreme west coast, and, on the opposite side, at Messana, and then 
returned to Italy, leaving the island to become, as he said, " a 
wrestling-ground for the Romans and Carthaginians." 

The government of Carthage was held by two chief magistrates, 
elected from certain families of distinction, with appointment for 
life. The Romans called them " Suffetes," a corruption of the 
Punic word Shophetim, i.e. "Judges." The generals came next in 
power, sometimes holding both offices. There was a legislative body 
or senate of two chambers, the smaller Upper Council being chosen 
out of the larger. This council is remarkable for the unchanging 
policy which it followed for hundreds of years. There was also 
a popular assembly of whose powers we know nothing : the con- 
stitution was evidently that of an aristocratic or oligarchical republic, 
like Venice in modern days. The city was so great that, in the 
days of her decline, there were 700,000 inhabitants. The revenue 
was derived from the tribute of Phoenician towns in Africa, paid in 
money ; from tribute in dates, skins, corn, gold, and other products 



The Lydians and Phrygians 49 

brought by the tribes of the interior ; from heavy customs duties ; 
and from mines of lead, tin, and other metals in Spain and Corsica. 
There was an extensive trade with the interior of Africa, by means 
of caravans, in which Carthage gave cheap drapery and weapons, 
and indispensable salt, in exchange for gold, slaves, ivory, and certain 
kinds of precious stones. The European trade of the Carthaginian 
merchants and carriers by sea included sulphur from Sicily ; wine 
from many countries ; wax, honey, and slaves from Corsica ; iron 
from Elba ; cattle and fruit from the Balearic Isles ; copper and tin 
from Britain ; and amber from the Baltic. There was a caravan- 
trade by way of Spain to the interior of Gaul. Such were the 
resources that enabled this famous state to command the services 
of fleets and of armies of mercenary troops, and to wage war, in 
her latest days, with the power that was to subdue the world. 



Chapter VI. — The Lydians and Phrygians. 

The Lydians, a people of Semitic race, according to high authorities, 
and largely Hittite, according to others, in civilisation if not in blood, 
dwelt in the west-central region of Asia Minor, watered by the river 
Hermus, its tributary the Pactolus, and the Cayster. Their capital, 
in historical times, was the famous Sardis, at the northern base of 
the Tmolus range of mountains, attaining the height of 6 ; ooo feet. 
The Pactolus, flowing through the city, was a mere brook, and its 
"golden sands" are now believed to allude to 'the riches of the 
people derived from the manufacture of stuffs, carpets, and rugs, 
and from the command of the trade between the inner highlands 
and the coast. The Lydians had much skill in the weaving and 
dyeing of wool, and the mines of Tmolus, if not the sands of Pactolus, 
gave much gold. In the history of civilisation they have credit for 
the invention of coined money, which greatly improved international 
and social intercourse by the substitution of purchase for barter. 
The deities chiefly worshipped were the sun-god Attys, and Cybele, 
the mother of the gods, corresponding to the Hittite-Babylonian 
Tammuz and Istar. 

The first really historical sovereign, after semi-mythical kings 
had reigned for about three centuries, was Gyges, who founded, 
about 690 B.C., the dynasty called the Mermnadas, of a native 
Lydian family. Energy, ambition, and statesmanship marked this 
period of Lydian history. Mysia, to the north, was annexed, and 



5<d A History of the World 

the Greek cities on the coast were also attacked by Gyges, in order 
that Lydia might command again the outlets to the /Egean Sea at 
the mouths of her rivers and the harbours on her seaboard. A 
sturdy resistance was made by the cities, and the struggle was ended 
for the time through an invasion of Lydia by the Cimmerians, a 
wild people whose original country lay between the rivers Borysthenes 
{Dnieper) and the Tanais {Don), and in the Tauric Chersonesus 
(the Crimea). They were driven thence by the Scythians, and 
passed round to the southern shore of the Black Sea, whence they 
proceeded to make inroads throughout Asia Minor. These noxious 
intruders did not attempt to settle, but were mere hordes of plun- 
derers who stormed and sacked towns and ravaged the countryside. 
Gyges, seeking help from Asshurbanipal of Assyria, was relieved 
for a time, and in return became tributary. Then he revolted, in 
alliance with Psamatik of Egypt, and in another Cimmerian invasion 
he was slain. His son and successor, Ardys, reigned for 36 years 
in the 7.th century, and in his day the Cimmerians took and 
plundered Sardis, and then retired, unable to get at the citadel. 
This king and his successor renewed the contest with the Greek 
cities on the coast, without much success, but the territory was 
increased by the conquest of Phrygia. 

Under Alyattes, the greatest of the Lydian kings, reigning chiefly 
in the first half of the 6th century, the monarchy reached its highest 
point. The Cimmerians were finally disposed of, and the frontier 
was advanced eastwards to the Halys (now Kizil-Irmak), the 
greatest river of Asia Minor, an important ethnographical and 
political boundary, dividing the Indo-European races of the western 
region from the Semitic races of south-west Asia, and cutting off 
the Lydian empire, at the time of which we are treating, from the 
newly formed Median monarchy. Alyattes was thus confronted with 
Kyaxares of Media, and war ensued. After an even contest for 
five years, a great battle was being fought in favour of the Medians, 
when it was suddenly interrupted by an eclipse of the sun. The 
intervention of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon brought about a peace, 
cemented by the marriage of Alyattes' daughter to Kyaxares' 
eldest son Astyages. The date of this event is given as 585 B.C. 
The Halys was now the boundary, and the Lydian monarchy, with 
dominions of fertile land that now included Bithynia and Paphla- 
gonia on the Euxine (Black Sea), and great wealth derived from 
her natural resources and from trade, was in the height of power 
and fame. Sardis, with splendid buildings, was a grand and luxurious 



The Lydians and Phr) c i 

rda the western capital ol the 
re, tli«- i 

i 

I I a little 
ruin m i 

;t 560 1 • I 

ited l>y the g 
hi and 

:i of the 
• 
a most I - iplined and well moun e 1 cavalry, 

ifaroyal trea ked with wealth in various forms. Tins 

. and amiable monarch, wh f fault a] 

: pride in his wealth, captured Ephesus and 
1 on the • pt Miletus, with which 

he made an alliance. When < 

•ther m ■'. . the I.yduin I 

is kinsiu wing 

phi, to which be 
ived the well-known ambiguous 

thnt by he would <!■ real empire. 

n his own I Cj rus. 

it an indecisive ba I then retired to Sar !i>, hoping 

ir with the aid of troops from 
all of whi< li states he sent envi 

plans. He folio 

Ice li i 111 l>y surpn him in a 

with the 
ind the monai 

f Gi the unsta 

I the M< man id e had 

him an intim 1 and in his 

1 



5 2 A History of the World 

Lydia proper, being a region whose pastures maintained vast flocks 
of sheep famous for wool of fine quality. Some of the land was very 
fertile, especially in the south-west, at the foot of the Taurus 
Mountains, giving rise to the Mseander and other rivers. There 
was gold in the streams, and the marble was noted in ancient 
times. Traces of the Phrygians are found in almost all parts of 
Asia Minor, in regions where they dwelt before they were driven 
into narrower limits by Semitic and other peoples. The question 
of their origin is one of gjeat difficulty, though some authorities 
declare the Phrygians to be a branch of the great Aryan stock which 
settled in Thrace (now Bulgaria and Roumelia), and, crossing the 
Bosphorus, moved eastwards as far as the Armenian highlands, 
becoming there ancestors of the Armenian nation which, mixed with 
later Aryans, has become so mournfully famed in the most modern 
days. About 750 B.C. an independent monarchy was formed in 
north-west Phrygia, with its capital at Gordium, on the bank of the 
river Sangarius. We know nothing certain of the dates of the kings, 
called by the names of " Gordius " and " Midas." The Phrygian 
religion, whose deities included Cybele and Attys, largely influenced 
the Greek mythology, and the country seems to have been a great 
centre of the orgiastic worship known as " Mysteries." The 
conquest by Lydia has been related above. 



Chapter VII. — The Bactrian?, Medes, and Persians : 
Medo-Persian Empire. 

Bactria, a territory nearly the same as that of the modern Balkh, 
to the north of the Paropamisus {Hindu A'us/i) mountains, was 
probably one of the original homes of the Aryans. Its capital, 
Bactra or Zariaspa, has been held to be the cradle of the religion of 
the ancient Persians. Still professed by the Parsis, the " fire- 
worshippers," as they are vulgarly called, this faith is really a 
monotheism, in which honour is paid to fire, as the purest and most 
perfect emblem of the Deity. The religion was founded or reformed 
by a man named Zarathustra or Zaradusht, in Greek " Zoroaster," 
who lived at an uncertain time not later than 800 B.C., perhaps much 
earlier, in or near Bactria. The main doctrine set forth in the 
sacred law, the Avesta, is that of a continuous warfare of good 
spirits, led by Ormuzd, against the evil spirits, headed by Ahriman, 
in regard to the life and destruction, welfare or misery, of man and 



The Bactrians, Medes, and Persians 53 

the soul after death. Mithra, the sun-go i, was held to be the 
equal of his creator Ormuzd. The priests, originally called 
Athravans, from athao (fire), became the Magi of the Medes and 
Persians, a powerful hereditary landed class, the keepers and 
propagators of the Avestan law. There was once a powerful Bactrian 
kingdom, but it has no history in the proper sense ; there are only 
mythical accounts of the doings of its monarchs. 

In Media we are on firmer ground. We have already seen the 
Medians, in the 9th century, dwelling by the Zagros range, east of 
Assyria proper. It is probable that, in the formation of the Median 
nation, pure Aryans became a ruling class, a military aristocracy, 
among peoples mostly of non-Aryan race, and that the whole were, 
in course of time, called " Medes." In its greatest extent, the 
empire may have reached far into Asia Minor, and eastwards nearly 
to the Indus. At any rate, most of the countries in the eastern part 
of the plateau of Eran or Iran, as Hyrcania, Parthia, and Bactria, 
paid tribute to Media, and may have had Median governors. A 
king named Deioces, ruling from 708 to 655, is said to have founded 
the capital Agbatana (Ecbatana, the modern Hamad&n), a place 
stated by Herodotus to have had seven-fold walls, each higher than 
the next outside it, and with battlements of a different colour. The 
inmost wall enclosed the citadel, with the treasury and the archives. 
The city became, from its cool mountain climate, the favourite 
summer residence of the Persian kings. Phraortes or Fravartish, 
the second king, has been seen as killed in fighting against Assyria, 
and his son Kyaxares (633-593 B - c -) as warring with Lydia and as 
aiding Babylon, in 608-606, to overthrow the Assyrian empire. 
Astyages, last king of the Medes (593-558), was deposed by Cyrus, 
whose chief exploits, with the rise of the Persian empire, we 
now relate. 

The Persians were Aryans who, at an unknown time, migrated 
into the fertile plateau, to become under their dominion rich in fruit 
and corn, which bears their name. The uplands were watered by 
mountain-streams, and wooded pastures on the slopes and in the 
valleys gave abundant food for cattle. The soil and climate were 
thus well suited for the development of a prosperous people. An 
out-door life made them expert in riding and hunting, and the 
simple manly life of the warrior class or nobles is shown in the 
Greek historian's statement that " their sons were carefully taught to 
ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth." The ruling class, the 
Aryan conquerors, were dominant over a large subject population, 
5 



54 A History of the World 

so that their position somewhat resembled that of the Normans 
in the British Isles. In time hereditary monarchy arose out of the 
chieftainship of various clans or tribes, and a long line of sovereigns, 
that of the Akhsemenidaj, had its first great representative in 
Kurush (Kei Khosrbo), called by the Greeks and known in history 
as Cyrus. He is held to be the founder of the Persian monarchy 
in 558, having united under one sovereign the Median and Persi in 
branches of the Aryan race. He was a conqueror and ruler of great 
ability, magnanimous, just, and mild, and soon made loyal subjects 
of the Medes. His conquest of Lydia has been related, and this 
was followed by the subjection of the Greek cities on the coast of 
Asia Minor, and of Lycia and Caria. In eastern Iran (or Eran) 
the Bactrians, Hyrcanians, and other tribes or nations were added 
to the empire, and in 539-538 came the conquest of the Babylonian 
empire, as already told. The taking of the great city Babylon, 
surrounded by brick walls of enormous thickness and height, with a 
deep ditch in front, and gates of brass closing all streets leading to 
the river-banks, has been justly regarded as a warlike achievement 
of the highest class. There were in that age no military engines 
for the breaching of fortifications, and the large area of land within 
the walls grew food enough to enable the defenders to bid defiance 
to famine. Stratagem was the assailant's one resource, and this was 
aided either by carelessness or treachery on the part of some of the 
garrison. Cyrus resolved to turn the course of the Euphrates into 
the empty beds of a lake and canal near at hand. On a night when 
it was known that the whole city was given up to the reckless revelry 
of an annual feast, the high broad bank between the river and the 
empty lake and canal was broken down by a large division of the 
Persian troops. By midnight the work was done. The river-waters 
rushed into the receptacles provided ; the bed passing through the 
city was left dry ; and by this way other divisions marched into the 
heart of Babylon, through one or more gates left open at the street- 
ends abutting on the river. The palace was mastered in the midst 
of Belshazzar's orgie, as with " a thousand of his lords," and his 
princes, his wives, and the ladies of his harem, he drank wine from 
" the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had 
taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem." This event 
occurred in 538 B.C., deriving added renown from the dramatic 
details concerning the letters of fire emblazoned on the wall. The 
conqueror displayed his politic clemency in the respect which he 
showed to the religion of his new subjects, sacrificing in the shrines 



The Medes and Persians 55 

of Babylon, and releasing the Jews, as already related, for the 
rebuilding of their city and Temple. Nine years later, this most 
admirable of Oriental potentates, Cyrus the Great, fell fighting in 
one of his eastern expeditions. The seven-years' reign (529-522) 
of his son Cambyses was notable only for his temporary conquest 
of Egypt. 

The reign of Darius I., son of Hystaspes, from 521 to 485 B.C., 
was that of an administrator of great ability, a born ruler of men, 
and a captain of no mean capacity. He was not only one of 
Persia's greatest sovereigns, but one of the most distinguished 
monarchs of all time. The first task which confronted him was 
the suppression of revolts on every side. With the greatest vigour 
peace and order were restored in Babylonia, Asia Minor, Media, 
Parthia, Hyrcania, and even in Persia itself, the original province. 
In truth, the vast dominion which extended from the Nile to the 
Oxus, and from beyond the Hellespont to India, had not yet been 
organised by a master-mind. When the first needful work ot 
compelling obedience was achieved, and six years had passed away, 
Darius devoted himself to the higher duty of a patriotic sovereign, 
that of improving the condition of his subjects. For seven years 
he displayed his genius as a statesman in organising a vast empire 
under a vigilant, active, and absolute central government, that 
prosperity for all might exist in a settled dominion. The whole 
territory was divided into 20 " satrapies," or governments, ruled by 
men selected from the highest nobility, whose sons were carefully 
trained, under the king's immediate supervision, for the tenure of 
high office. The governors had each command of the local troops 
in his own province, but royal soldiers garrisoned all the fortresses. 
The satraps were kept steadily to efficient work by the transmission 
to the sovereign of reports made by inspecting commissioners, and 
by the king's own observation during his tours. Speedy punishment 
then fell on satraps whose territories showed signs of oppression 
or neglect in poverty and discontent, fields untilled, villages and 
buildings in a ruinous condition. The taxation was regulated and 
improved, and each province, through the governor, was bound to 
remit a fixed amount of tribute. Independent officials, the " royal 
judges," administered justice, and no interference with the religion, 
language, and local customs of the- people was allowed. Under a 
system so enlightened and benevolent, wonderful to have been 
devised and carried out by an Oriental "despot" in that age, it 
is clear that misconduct in the local governors was alone responsible 



56 A History of the World 

for lack of prosperity among the governed. The provincial revenue 
included an equitable land-tax founded upon careful survey, and 
payable in gold and silver specie or bullion, as well as tribute in 
kind — horses, mules, sheep, ivory, slaves, grain, and other matters. 
Dues were also levied on forests, mines, and fisheries. Rapid 
communication between the provinces and the central government, 
essential to safety and stability in so vast an empire, was for the 
first time attained by the construction of good roads throughout 
the whole dominion, connecting specially the capitals of provinces. 
There was a regular postal service for the use of the government, 
with stations at which saddled horses were kept ready at all hours 
for the royal couriers. These highways were, of course, of great 
importance for the movement of troops, and, as Darius knew and 
intended, for commercial interests. This enlightened monarch also 
planned, and carried out as far as possible, a uniform gold and 
silver coinage, and completed in Egypt the canal from the Nile 
to the Red Sea which had been put in hand ages before by 
Ramesses II. and continued centuries later by Necho I. This 
anticipation of the Suez Canal of our day was in advance of the 
wants of the age, and, after being cleared and deepened two 
centuries later, was first disused and then choked up. The chief 
cities or royal capitals of the empire were Babylon, as a winter 
residence ; Agbatana or Ecbatana, on the high ground east of the 
Zagros mountains, as a resort during the summer heats ; Susa, the 
" Shushan " of the Hebrew writers, the chief royal residence, east 
of Babylon ; Pasargadse, in Persia proper, south-east of Susa, this 
being the cradle of the Akhaemenian dynasty, where the tomb of 
Cyrus is still to be seen ; and Sardis, in Asia Minor, the former 
capital of Lydia. Darius I. formed a new capital and erected a 
magnificent palace at Persepolis, in the finest part of his native 
state, south west of Pasargadae. The Persian style of architecture, 
midway between the massive Assyrian style and the artistic beauty 
of the Greek, was most finely shown at Persepolis, where staircases 
of imposing grandeur, one having above a hundred steps, each 
about four inches high, and wide enough for ten horsemen to go 
abreast, lead up to a platform of gigantic masses of marble masonry. 
The outer and inner walls of the stairs are profusely ornamented 
with sculptured figures in relief, and with rosettes. The "Hall of 
the Hundred Columns," in ten rows of ten tall and slender shafts 
springing from an inverted flower-base and with the bent necks of 
animals at the top, was one vast apartment, 227 feet square, used 



fhe Persians 57 

»m and reception-hall, and the i»l. 
ale 

13 when he turned from the work of 
II ambition, not 
l with all irithin his reach, turned to Eui 

and he n the \ iian plains. 

. with .1 vast host of men under Darius' 
imand, sho* us th torus and the 

I the subjection of Thi wed 

treat oft in armament from lack of resoui 

thiana were in close pursuit when Darius and his men 
hipboard, the only result of the expedition 
along thi I 

anil the Pontus Euxinus (Black S 1:. n< k\ -vent 

h led to the momentous cont 

if the 5th century, 
tlted in 501, 

led I •" tyrant " <>f 

utterly d 1 he peopli .rried off 

n < '.ulf, youths and maiden 
I he rebel! - on the H< ll< sp ml wer< bui 

n world sl I this retribul 

terribly displayed Persian power Darius 

. :, in the battle ol I id< . I iff M: I 

the hel| 

tlly rankled m the 

ture and burning 
;< h inclu : Vthens. Resoluti 

• 
the - n which invad i under Datia and 

ion. 

the throi 
• 

in the war with I 

H I . 



58 A History of the World 

was warfare with the Athenians and other Greeks who had helped 
the Egyptians. The next Persian king of any note was Darius II., 
surnamed Nothus, a son of Artaxerxes I. He was much under 
the influence of his wife Parysatis, a strong-minded wicked woman, 
during his reign of 19 years, 424-405. The empire had seen its 
best days. The satraps, not controlled as under Darius I., provoked 
the subjects of the empire by oppression. Egypt revolted in 414, 
and remained independent for 6o years. Greek mercenaries 
were replacing the native troops in the Persian armies, and, 
highly paid by revolting satraps, helped them against the central 
government. The reign of Artaxerxes II. (405-362) is interesting 
for the revolt of his brother Cyrus the Younger, which, after the 
rebel's fall at the battle of Cunaxa, near Babylon, in 401, was 
followed by the famous " Retreat of the Ten Thousand," the Greeks 
commanded by Xenophon, as related in his charming Anabasis. 
Other insurrections, with difficulty suppressed, showed the crumbling 
condition of the empire under weak rule. A change came for a 
time with Artaxerxes III. (362-338), a man of energetic and 
determined character. He sternly subdued revolting satraps, reduced 
Egypt again to vassalage, won back Cyprus, and conducted with 
success the war against Judea and Phoenicia, in which Sidon was 
taken and destroyed. He had planned an expedition to Greece 
in order to help the Athenians against Philip of Macedon, after 
having supplied the former foes of Persia with men and money, 
when he was murdered by his favourite Bagoas. In 336 Darius III., 
surnamed Codomanus, came to the throne, the last sovereign, of 
Persia. He was succeeding to an empire revived by the genius and 
vigour of Artaxerxes, but was wholly unfit to maintain the advantage. 
He had, moreover, to cope with one of the " world-historical " men, 
one of the greatest in all history, and, if he had been far stronger 
in character and ability than he was, he would have succumbed in 
the end to an antagonist like Alexander the Great. The struggle 
will be dealt with in the history of Greece, *.nd we need only here 
state that the last of the greater Oriental empires came to an end 
in 330 B.C. 

Chapter VIII. — The Parthians. 

Parthia proper, a mountainous but fertile and, in ancient times, 
well-wooded region, lying south-eastwards from the Caspian Sea, 
from which it was separated by Hyrcania, was part of a satrapy of 



The Parthi 

iple have been <! 
• - .thi.m d< of the 

Turanians that 

pted, in time, the Median dress and a partly \ 
Dui the continuance of the Persian empire, th 
faithful subje< r the death of Alexander th 

Pal t to the (irctk liiuii.in hs (the 

inded an in lependent 
relied into an empire extending from the Caspian 
If, and from the valley of the Indus 
to the Euphi ii l 

from hi-'. 

:i empire, it was in si in 

with an interval, of the renowned im| led by A. 

i Parthians had, in addition to their 

ivrn in the sculptures -mam 

and mental Turanian 

few hundreds of h 
■ the king, and of cr the i 

-law- hoi 
. and str z the nati 

H 
•ion to horse-ridin t of transai tin 

-. in the open air. much of the business of lil 

nd inclu 

truly 
formidable from th< ir skill in archery and peculiar 

by men who m 
i 

Id turn in pr< 

tin, and, il 

• ■ 
I 

■ 



60 A History of the World 

territory from the inroads of mere barbarians, by their tolerance in 
religious matters, and by their liberal treatment of foreigners. The 
religion seems to have consisted in worship of the Sun and Moon, 
of ancestral idols carried about on change of habitation, and of 
certain deities of the royal house. Greek was the official language 
during the most flourishing period of Parthian history, and in other 
ways the people were influenced by the Greek civilisation due to 
Alexander and his successors. 

It was about 250 b.c. that a Parthian chief named Arsaces 
headed an anti-Greek movement of his countrymen and revolted 
from Antiochus II. of Syria. In this the Parthians were following 
the successful lead of the province of Bactria. Arsaces I. became 
firmly seated on the throne of the new kingdom, and under his 
successor, his brother Tiridates, an able and energetic man, who 
reigned as Arsaces II. for about 30 years, the Parthian power 
was fully established. Hyrcania was taken from the Syrian king, 
who was completely defeated in his attempt to regain his lost 
province and to subdue Parthia. This victory was for two centuries 
celebrated by a solemn festival, to whose people it was as Marathon 
to Greece, or Morgarten to the rising Swiss nation. Tiridates spent 
the rest of his time in securing the new state by the erection of 
fortresses and in other labours for his people. His son Artabanus, 
reigning as Arsaces III., from about 218 to 196 B.C., dared to 
declare war against Antiochus the Great, but was at first forced back 
from his conquest of Media, and then, without a battle, lost his 
own capital Hecatompylos. Pursued into Hyrcania, Artabanus 
resisted with wonderful courage and tenacity, losing town after 
town, but at last wearing out his antagonist by guerilla warfare, and 
compelling the acknowledgment of his independence. The great 
warlike hero of Parthian history, rhe man who founded the Parthian 
empire, was Mithradates I., who reigned from 174 to 136. This 
ambitious and able monarch, a brave soldier, a good strategist, firm 
in rule, excellent in administration, made a complete revolution in 
Asiatic affairs. Syria was declining in power, and Bactria was 
harassed by Scythian nomads. Mithradates attacked both kingdoms 
with success. Bactria, Media, Susiana, Babylonia, and Persia were 
conquered, and the Parthian warrior-king even carried his arms, 
without permanent results, over the Punjab to the Hydaspes 
(Jhelum). Reigning now r from the Hindu Kush to the Euphrates, 
Mithradates had to fight hard for the retention of what he had won, 
but died in fall possession of his power. The system of government 



The Parthiana I i 

il comp 
. house, tl ritual lei 

and the nobles. Tins count U an 

I by the king, hut made up < >f j . • . the 

by hirth Or Office, I er the M I , re.it 

N >M.ir< h. whom 

ran the royal house. The priestly i 

last tO nun. f men, ; 

and commanding popular revei The provinces were either 

"a the Persian system, by satraps, or by dependent ki 
paying tribute and supplying contin for the m 

karkable that the many i 
tunded bj ler or I. 

to have their own munii • eminent Seleu< ia <>n 

' the 

manding the navigation of the I .-■• and 
the 1 . and placed at the meeting <>f all I 

between eastern and western A : was 

pulation Ith, inhabited by from 

M nia, and .'. - J 

■>h<>n, in tern hank of 

pita! of the Parthian kii itana 

• mil 1 and philan- 
thropic Mithl knew how 

iian empire, in war ssith - for a tune 

with the three and 

• ral prot rtl revolt. In the end, 

neral risii 

.in int. r! ■ 1 I 

■ 
■ 
ail t 

< hn with barbarism all 
I 
1 1 

; • 1 | 



62 A History of the World 

barbarians, became an independent monarchical power, and held 
dominion from the Gulf of Issus to the Caspian Sea. At this 
time also, between 112 and 93 B.C., Mithradates of Pontus created 
an empire of vast extent and resources, including territory to the 
east and south of the Black Sea, and in close alliance with Tigranes 
of Armenia. It was this formidable growth of power in this region 
that first brought Parthia into connection with Rome. Mithra- 
dates II. of Parthia sent an embassy to the famous Roman general 
Sulla, who was then in Asia Minor, warring successfully with the 
Armenians, and sought an offensive and defensive alliance with 
Rome. This did not take place, but a friendly understanding 
arose. After the death of Mithradates, Parthia suffered from 
Armenian attacks, losing much of her western territory. The 
history becomes at this time obscure. There were, it seems, civil 
wars and a rapid succession of monarchs up to 69 B.C., and then 
occurred events which ultimately led to war with Rome. In 66 b.c. 
the great Roman general Pompeius (Pompey), engaged in Asia 
at once against the two powerful foes Mithradates of Pontus and 
Tigranes of Armenia, sought to enlist Parthia on the Roman side, 
promising restitution of her lost provinces. For the first and last 
time, the Parthians were in alliance with Rome, and their forces 
engaged the attention of Tigranes while the Roman commander 
was breaking the power of Mithradates. Pompey, no longer need- 
ing Parthian help, did not fulfil his promises, and even sent troops 
who prevented the Parthian king from repossessing lost territory. 
This faithless conduct was not forgotten, and when Orodes I. 
(54-37) was on the Parthian throne, Rome paid the penalty in one 
of the worst military disasters of her whole conquering career. 

The plutocrat Crassus, ambitious to attain the military distinction 
won by his colleagues in the " First Triumvirate," Caesar and 
Pompey, chose Syria as his sphere of action, and in 53 B.C. invaded 
Parthia at the head of seven legions, 4,000 cavalry, and an equal 
number of slingers and archers. The eldest son of Julius Caesar, 
a brave youth skilled in war, especially sent by his father from 
Gaul, was on the staff of the Roman general. The Euphrates was 
crossed at a point north-east from Antioch, and Crassus was 
craftily persuaded by an Arab chieftain in Parthian pay, who had 
come into his camp, to follow up the enemy's artful retreat. The 
Parthian forces were in charge of Surenas (not a personal name, 
but an official title meaning "commander-in-chief"), a man of 
the greatest courage, ability, and personal distinction among his 



The Parthia 

. ilry, 

in the u-.-ir, 
I 
men the rid 

mid cope with ai 

outnumb 
by their trc.K h< • 

falsely si 

i 
the Parthian I tion whi< 

ly tr.ip into which they had (alien 
with arrows <>f great peneti 

■ fell by hundi 
! unable I with the 

mmandei 

with 

With ' 
and the ; 

the last 

I i 

I 
. 

I in full i 
ami » 

mch 
•irc«I 

. in 

■ 

l 



64 A History of the World 

moreover, to obtain possession of the Roman commander, which 
would be, with Orientals, the most highly prized proof of success, 
and would gratify the animosity which the Parthians felt towards 
Crassus. His greed for gold was well known to them, and they 
believed it to be his sole motive for his wanton aggression. He 
had, previous to his invasion, insulted them at a conference with 
envoys of their king, Orodes, by declaring that " he would give 
the ambassadors his answer in their capital." They were now 
in a position to prove the truth of the chief envoy's spirited 
reply, as he struck the palm of one hand with the fingers of 
the other, " Hairs will grow here, Crassus, before you see Seleucia." 
The Parthian general drew off his troops, and then enticed Crassus 
to a surrender by promise of favourable terms. The Roman 
general and his staff were being conducted towards the Parthian 
camp on the pretence of reducing the terms to writing, since 
" the Romans," as Surenas bitterly said, in allusion to the bad 
faith of Pompey, "were apt to forget engagements," when a scuffle 
took place, during which Crassus was killed. The rest of the 
army then surrendered. Of the 40,000 men that had crossed 
the Euphrates, one-half died in action, about a quarter returned, 
and nearly 10,000 prisoners remained in Parthia as virtual slaves, 
marrying native wives, and serving in the state-armies. The 
place of their settlement was Margiana, at the north-east of the 
empire, in the fertile oasis notable in modern days as Merv, now 
in Russian Turkestan. It was this successful defiance of Roman 
arms that gave Parthia her recognition from Graeco-Roman writers 
as the Second Power of the ancient world in those days. The 
Parthian king, Orodes, then visiting the Armenian monarch, was 
informed of the result, while he was a spectator of a performance 
of Euripides' play the Bacchae, by seeing the head of Crassus 
brought upon the stage by one of the company of Greek strolling 
actors. Parthian cruelty of derision was shown by the pouring 
into the head's mouth of a stream of molten gold. No great result, 
such as might have been expected, came of this Parthian victory. 
Mesopotamia was fully recovered, and Armenia was lost to the 
Roman alliance ; but it was only Roman credit for invincibility in 
war, not the solid fabric of Roman power, which suffered. 

The next conflict of Parthia with Rome came in 40 B.C., when 
Syria and Phoenicia, and all the southern coast of Asia Minor, were 
overrun by her troops. The triumvir Antony sent forces against 
them, and these won three victories, the last involving the death 



The Parthi 

• i .vim had 

. him with himself in tin- Parthian rule, l 
I the dominion ol u id mon 

tlu- west. The death [uickly followed !>>• that <<( 

his a ken fa 1 1 

• his surviving 30 ly to die, 

of i'.irr; the hands of tli- 

tluis In the follow 

■ the expense ol Parthia, invaded the empire 
with an immense arm) and l»or 1 ! tached portion of 

Ins I is utterly ruined in a battle, with the loss of 10,000 

kilh .ill the h md engines of w.ir foi and, 

in hi from the unsu< cessful - 

imand was nv ly handled. The to:. I Roman loss 

Me third of the 100,000 men who had begun the 
< ami aign i • this warfare, an . nan 

Armenia and M< nst Rom 

•ill predominant in hi 
tan vanity w red l>y the voluntary 

: irds and the surviving prisoners taken from 
•ml-<\ by the courtly Roman 
1 triumph the truth being thai the unpati 

I by the 

• • internal Stl I IS might, at anv 

■1 Phraal 

|uent lenj 

P irthia, in whi< h I. 
inter" 

irmed foi 
under t ; nt < 

l 



66 A History of the World 

emperor Trajan turned his attention towards Parthia, when he 
had effected, about a.d. 114, the conquest of Dacia and the 
reduction of that country to the form of a Roman province. The 
Roman ruler seems to have aimed at crushing the Eastern world 
and rivalling the fame of Alexander. Chosroes, the Parthian king, 
had been dealing with the affairs of Armenia, and this was made 
a pretext for war. In the winter of a.d. 114-115 Trajan quitted 
Antioch with a great army. First receiving Armenia's submission 
and annexing that country to the empire, and leaving garrisons in 
the chief strongholds, he made a double invasion of Parthia, by 
way of Nisibis in the north, and along the line taken southwards 
by Crassus. All upper Mesopotamia was overrun and annexed to 
the Roman empire, Chosroes withdrawing his forces beyond the 
Tigris. During the winter of 115-116 a fleet of vessels in 
pieces was constructed at Nisibis and conveyed in waggons to 
the Tigris. A passage was forced, against the resistance of the 
mountaineers, by a bridge made over the river, and then Nineveh, 
Arbela, and Gaugamela were occupied, Chosroes, with the usual 
Parthian tactics, still retiring and drawing on his foe. After 
recrossing the Tigris into Mesopotamia, and taking Hatra, a 
large town, Trajan, marching down the Euphrates, took Babylon 
without a blow, and then received the submission of Seleucia and 
Ctesiphon, facing each other on the Tigris. The Parthian king 
had thus abandoned his capital, taking with him his chief treasures, 
and hoping to draw his enemy eastwards, and wear him out by 
distance and by guerilla warfare. Trajan was too wary for such 
a course to succeed. He chose to take the surrender of the capital 
as the submission of the empire, and passed in triumph on shipboard 
down the Tigris to the Persian Gulf, which was reached in the 
summer of a.d. 116. In the meantime, revolt had broken out in 
his rear, with the expulsion or slaughter of his garrisons at Seleucia, 
Hatra, Nisibis, Edessa, and other towns. The greatest vigour and 
promptitude were needed, and these, in Trajan's person, were 
forthcoming. Seleucia was stormed and burnt, and the other towns 
were recovered, but some Roman divisions were destroyed ; and 
Trajan, on his return to Ctesiphon, abandoned his idea of conquer- 
ing the Parthian empire, and retired, after appointing, and with 
his own hand crowning, a man of Arsacid blood in place of Chosroes. 
The Romans reached Antioch after suffering some further loss, and 
Trajan, on his way back to Rome, died in Cilicia in the summer 

Of A.D. 117. 



p 

and Hadrian, the 
up Armenia, M i, and other 

ti-rr to the west of the Euphi 

thu • I ranquillity 

Roman « Vntoninus 

■ lian mon I i cpelled the Roman 

throne of Armenia, the <»1<1 battle field of strife 

■ man army w ! in 

Armenia. Anothi n by the Parthians in Syria, and 

alarm m I in Rome, but in 

nised 
: drove the Parth I 

1 ■ to rival the <Ioir.. 

• battle. He besii k, ami burnt Seleu 

1 siphon, where the royal pal ami 

nd, never beaten in battle, recovered all the I 
Parthi lost western . ( 

Their return to Italy was maj 

terrible plague, !;.■ if \vhi« h were brought by the tr 

• >umi the low and 

thousands died in 1: many 

; Ital) v tii<- disease in i 

: the Alps to tiie German < > 
I ulation. 1 i. i urred in the i 

of ti r Aurelius. I be em| 

; i Parth ia by • 

to il<-.il with a rival emperor, who 

rthian invasion, and 1 ■ hich 

1 i th 

■ 

■ 



68 A History of the World 

established not only in the long-disputed Mesopotamia, but in the 
fertile region beyond the Tigris, called Adiabene, the richest part 
of ancient Assyria. The last king of Parthia was Artabanus V., 
who came to power in a.d. 215. The Roman emperor Caracalla, 
the vain, weak, and ambitious son of Severus, aimed at Alexander's 
exploit of conquering the East, and entered Parthia with a large 
force in a.d. 216. His conduct was that of a violent madman. He 
had made proposals to marry the daughter of the Parthian king, 
and to make an alliance between the two powers, with the view 
of founding a joint universal monarchy. Artabanus thought both 
proposals absurd, but felt obliged to pretend to yield, and welcomed 
the Roman at Ctesiphon. The Roman troops, at their emperor's 
signal, began to massacre the people, and Artabanus escaped with 
difficulty. Caracalla. then retired with a great, booty, plundering 
and burning on his route. At Arbela the Parthian royal burial-place 
was violated, and the remains of the monarchs were scattered. 
The emperor then wrote to the Senate in Rome, .announcing 
himself as the conqueror of all the East. In the spring of 217 
he was murdered in Mesopotamia by one of his guards, and 
Macrinus, the chief conspirator, a commander of the Praetorian 
body-guard, was raised to power. Artabanus had been making 
great preparations to avenge the treacherous deed of the Romans 
at Ctesiphon, and his force included a camel-corps of men in 
complete armour, picked troops carrying very long spears. A three- 
days' battle took place near Nisi bis, in Upper Mesopotamia, and 
the Romans, after desperate fighting, were defeated. Macrinus 
had fled to camp during the struggle, and he had to submit 
to ignominious terms. The captives and plunder carried off by 
Caracalla were restored, and an enormous sum was exacted from 
the Romans. The last struggle between the two empires had 
ended in success for Parthia just before her own downfall. 

The Parthian dominion was one of those kingdom-empires of 
loose formation which always lack stability unless one of the races 
composing them has a great superiority of power and resources over 
any one, or two combined, of the other component parts, as is the 
case with Prussia in the modern German Empire, and with England 
in the British. Media, Armenia, Persia, Babylonia, Bactria,. Assyria, 
were each of them singly provinces equal to Parthia proper, and 
the Parthians, the suzerains of the vassal territories, had long been 
declining in vigour. For unknown reasons, it was the Persians who 
took the lead in revolt, and with speedy and complete success. 




THE ANCIENT WESTERN WORLD. 



O 69- 






The Aryan Immigration into Europe 69 

Artaxerxes, the young and energetic tributary ruler of Persia, rose 
a.d. 225, proclaiming the independence of his country. Media 
was invaded, and Artabanus then took the field. In the last 
of three great battles he was defeated and slain, and the Parthian 
Empire was soon afterwards overthrown, while Persia, whose career 
from this time will be traced in a later part of this history, became 
again a great power in the world. 



BOOK II. 

THE WESTERN NATIONS: GREECE. 

Chapter I. — Introductory : The Aryan Immigration into 

Europe. 

The grand historical fact connected with the spread of the highest 
form of civilisation throughout the world is the coming of the 
Aryans into Europe during a period perhaps extending from 2,000 
to 1,000 years prior to the Christian era. We have, in this series of 
migrations, the coming forward of the race which was destined to 
rule the greater part of the modern world — to fill the leading con- 
tinent, Europe ; to dominate a large part of Asia ; to become the 
masters of Africa ; and to people America and Australasia with 
new nations superseding the non-Aryan aboriginal tribes. These 
Aryans, the noblest specimens of mankind, alike in physical, 
moral, and mental character, poured into Europe, it is supposed, 
mainly through the steppes lying between the southern spurs 
of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. In course of 
time, in successive swarms, they spread themselves into the 
peninsulas of Greece, Italy, and Spain, and reached the northern 
and western territories of Europe. It is most likely that the Celts 
were the first-comers, the people who, at the dawn of authentic 
history, are found in the extreme west, in the British Isles, and in 
Spain and Gaul. This earliest migration from Asia seems to have 
been slowly made, large numbers of settlers remaining behind in 
various parts of central Europe, as in Bohemia and throughout 
Germany, where many traces of Celtic occupation survived the 
arrival of the second-comers, the Teutons. The Celts who occupied 
central Gaul reached their highest point of native civilisation, and 
it is supposed that migrations from this part, of the continent took 



70 A History of the World 

them to the British Isles, the Spanish peninsula, and northern 
Italy. In the 3rd century B.C., a backward movement towards 
Asia took a band of Gauls into Greece, and thence into Asia Minor, 
where they settled in the interior region known as Galatia. The 
Teutons, who will be dealt with hereafter, drove the Celts before 
them, and occupied ultimately most of Germany, Denmark, Holland, 
much of what is now Belgium, and the southern and central parts 
of the Scandinavian peninsula (Sweden and Norway). The Slavs, 
the latest Aryan immigrants into Europe, occupied all the great 
eastern plain, prior to historical times, spreading northwards from 
the region of the Carpathians to the Baltic, westwards as far as the 
Elbe in its upper waters, and later, after the overthrow of the Huns 
in the 5th century a.d., going southwards beyond the Danube and 
peopling the whole peninsula between the Adriatic and Black Seas. 
The Slavs thus comprise most of the inhabitants of Russia, Bul- 
garia, Ulyria, Poland, Silesia, Pomerania, Bohemia, and Croatia. 

The Aryans have been also styled by scholars the Indo-European 
race, because some of the Asiatic branch, at the migrations from 
the original seats, came through the break between the Himalayas 
and the Hindu Rush chain into the Indian peninsula, long after the 
other branch had been making its way into Europe. The position 
reached by the Aryans in modern civilisation is due to the facts 
that they have not only inherited all the culture of the Oriental 
nations, including the Egyptians, but they possessed, in the highest 
degree, the faculties needful for attaining and keeping the moral 
and intellectual, as well as physical, mastery of the world — 
power of endurance, adaptability to varied conditions of life, and 
the capacity and zeal for indefinite self-improvement, and for 
continuous progress and achievement in science, literature, art, 
and all that has power to elevate mankind. It is now our purpose 
to deal, in the history of Greece, with one of the finest developments 
— in some respects yet unequalled — of this grand historical race. 

Chapter II. — Greece, ist Pkrioo : From the Dorian 
Migration to the Persian Wars (1100-500 b.c.).* 

Ancient Greece, as a geographical term, included four principal 
mainland regions, two archipelagoes, and some detached islands. 
The modern Morea, the southern peninsular portion, was called 

* For detailed information on Greek mythology and legends the reader is 
referred to Myths and Legends, by E. M. Berens (Blackie & Son): for Greek 



( i : • Period (i 100-500 b ~ 1 

ts chief I 
! Corinth, last 

■ 

divisions \t: To 

■ 

l I 
Mori 
. the pui 

that the term 
•m the 1 tl e " < »n 

I he word " 1 1 lied, 

the 

in ti. r, it nit! 

the 

■ the historical period. 

I the A 

.il with 

the 

'.Mill 

■ I of 
rl c lien ic an 



Period (i 100-500 b.c.) 

iuth of T 
mountainous region which they ke| 

i & in their 

. ment i • ther tli-.tr 

•all, and 1 ast of their ntry. 

I 1 10 j l:.' , hut Un- 
til the north proba ipied Q I I of tim<- 

led, and the " Desci nt <>i 
ed, into Peloponnesus 
ihiil I also in vessels ovei the long narrow uulf, their 

tility in war enabli d I c all 

. 

lit <<f this 

' ilian and 
the mainland 
1 Smyi 

loniai loponnesus il <1 to Attica, ;m>l • 

.ur number found 1, in 

phon. I ed in the islands • { 

I 

■ 

1 1 ttled 

and that in the 7th 
ttled fr<m 
n the A I 

find th< the 

•:.' 1 1 ttled 

in M Corinth, while tl 

■ 
■ 

. ami 1. 

I 

I 

. . I 

I 



74 A History of the World 

and moral character, carried to their highest point in the two most 
famous states of Greek history, Athens and Sparta. The Ionians 
were vivacious, excitable, and, compared with the Dorians, prone 
to change. Refinement, artistic taste, and a passion for self- 
government were not less conspicuous in their social and political 
life. Representing the progressive principle of human character, 
the Ionians combined subtlety of intellect with the spirit of enter- 
prise. In the words of Professor Jebb, their dialect " was the 
smooth, harmonious language of an ease-loving people, gifted with 
bright and versatile intelligence, educated to the contemplative 
enjoyment of natural beauty by the climate and scenery of the 
^Egean coasts and islands, and familiarised with elegant luxury by 
intercourse with Phoenicians and other Asiatics." The Dorians, in 
the mountain-region of Epirus and Thessaly, before they sought a 
new home in Peloponnesus, had developed the stern and rugged 
temper, the love of war, and contempt of trade and crafts, which 
are characteristic of highlanders. Their severity of character is 
marked in the full tones of their dialect, " the terse and sinewy 
speech of a steadfast race, whose grave earnestness was joined to 
a certain dry humour," and in their songs and dances, in the simplicity 
of their style of living, and in their political institutions. Strongly 
attached to ancient usage, having high regard to superiority of 
family and age, the Dorians were the conservatives of ancient 
Greece, with an oligarchic tendency in political affairs. Religion 
was to them a matter of serious import rather than of luxury 
connected widi the joys of festivals and of scenic display. The 
oracle was ever consulted before any important action was taken. 
The character of both Ionians and Dorians will more fully appear 
in the history of the two states which best represent them. 

The bonds of union between the many states of Greece were 
national and religious. They were all peopled, as regards the free 
citizens, apart from the numerous slaves, by Hellenes, men of the same 
great race, men of the same speech, in dialects differing no more 
than that of the educated Englishman does from the Scottish of the 
Lowlands. All Greeks alike looked with exclusive pride on the 
" barbarians," meaning simply non-Greek-speaking nations. The 
religious tie was very strong. With local differences and preferences 
of cult and rite, all Greeks worshipped the twelve great gods of 
the Olympic pantheon, developed from the earlier worship of 
natural powers. Zeus was the lord of the sky, ruler of all other 
gods as well as of men. His wife Hera was goddess of maternity. 



Greece: ist Period (1100-500 b.c.) 75 

Athena, the great deity of Athens, a maiden-goddess, was the 
representative of power and wisdom, the patroness of political 
communities, and of such useful social arts as weaving and agricul- 
ture. Apollo (Phoebus), whose worship was really the chief among 
the Greeks, identified later with the Sun-god {Helios), was the 
divinity of healing, music, poetry, and intellectual power. As god 
of prophecy, it was he who discerned and declared truth. Ares, god 
of war; Poseidon, ruling the sea; Hephaestus, god of fire and of 
works in metal ; Hermes, herald of the gods, patron of eloquence, 
prudence, shrewdness, invention, commercial skill, and cunning; 
Demeter, goddess of the earth and its fruits ; Artemis, the chief 
maiden-goddess, devoted to the chase, afterwards connected with 
the moon, as her brother, Phcebus Apollo, with the sun ; Hestia, 
goddess of the hearth-fire ; and Aphrodite, the lovely deity of 
beauty and sensual affection, — these complete the list of the greater 
deities, worshipped by invocation, and by sacrifices offered at altars 
which could be anywhere erected, but chiefly in special temples 
in cities and in country-districts, displaying the highest skill in 
architecture and sculpture that the world has ever seen. Among 
other deities may be named Dionysos, the youthful and comely 
god of wine, patron of the tragic drama, which in Greece arose 
out of the choruses sung at his Attic festivals, the " Lesser " or 
" Rural" Dionysia, the vintage-feast, in December; the Wine-Press 
Feast (Lenaea), in January ; the A/ithesteria, a merry " Feast of 
Flowers," in February, when last year's cask of generous wine was 
tapped ; and the famous " Great Dionysia," in March. Hence 
came both tragedy, literally "goat-song," because a goat, the injurer 
of vines by nibbling at the shoots, was sacrificed to Dionysos 
before the singing of the choral hymn ; and comedy, the " village- 
song," or the same hymn under another aspect, as bringing out 
the jests of a rustic carnival. It was at the spring Dionysia in 
Athens, a festival to which visitors came from every part of the 
Greek world, when the whole city was given up to processions 
in masquerade, with gay and noisy revelry of music and wine, 
that were performed, at the great open-air theatre of Dionysos, 
in competition for prizes, the tragedies and comedies of which such 
grand specimens remain. Hades, god of the lower world, the 
abode of shades or disembodied spirits, was represented as brother 
of Zeus and Poseidon, all three being children of two deities in 
the older pantheon, Cronos and Rhea, the latter being the " Great 
Mother," or " Mother of the Gods," having also the name of Cybele. 



76 A History of the World 

We may note that the sacred fire of Hestia was kept ever burning 
on an altar in the town-hall (Prytaneion) of a Greek city, and 
that at her altar, as that of the guardian-goddess of hearth and 
home, in the inmost part of every house, strangers, fugitives, 
and offenders found an inviolable sanctuary. The three Graces, the 
nine Muses, the three Moirse or Fates, the Furies or Eumenides 
pursuing the guilty, and an. endless variety of nymphs, naiads, 
nereids, the local and lesser deities of sea and forest, fountain 
and stream, all had their share of regard with all true Greeks. 

The festivals had also their influence on Greek unity. Every 
family, tribe, and race, each city, district, and state had its 
recurring festivals of special honour to the great deities or to local 
gods. The most famous Attic celebration of this class was the 
Panathenaea, held at Athens, the "Lesser" annually, and the 
" Greater " every fourth year, in honour of Athena-Polias, the 
patron-goddess and guardian of the chief Ionian state. In this 
magnificent display of joyous devotion Athenian maidens of the 
highest families bore aloft, like the sail of a galley, the sacred gold- 
embroidered woman's ample robe called peplus, woven by themselves 
for the statue of the deity. The procession was sculptured by 
Phidias and his pupils on the frieze of the Parthenon, her temple 
at Athens, the perfect specimen of Greek architecture, portions of 
which are among the " Elgin Marbles " in the British Museum. 
Foremost amongst these religious gatherings were the four great 
national festivals, attended by visitors from all parts of Greece and 
the colonies. The Olympic Games (or Olympian Festival) were 
celebrated at the plain of Olympia, in Elis, every fifth summer, in 
honour of Zeus. The Greek chronology called " Olympiads " had 
its origin in the year 776 b.c. The first recorded Olympiad dates 
from July 21st in that year, when a man of Elis, named Corcebus, 
gained the prize in the foot-race. The time was thus divided into 
periods of four years, and an event was dated by its occurrence in a 
particular year of a certain Olympiad. The Pythian Festival, in 
honour of Apollo, held to have been instituted by the god after he 
had slain the snaky monster Python, was celebrated every fifth year 
(the third of each Olympiad), near Delphi, anciently called Pytho, in 
Phocis, at the southern base of Mount Parnassus. The famous 
Castalian spring still flows at the spot where two lateral spurs of 
Parnassus, extending east and west around Delphi, draw near to 
each other. The Isthmian Games or Festival, in honour of 
Poseidon, occurred every fifth year on the Isthmus of Corinth ; the 



Greece: ist Period (1100-500 b.c.) 77 

Nemean, in honour of Zeus, took place every third year, in the 
valley of Nemea, in Argolis. The competitions in athletic sports at 
these celebrations were in running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, and 
chariot-racing, and there were also, in the three last, contests in 
music and poetry. The prize given was a simple wreath, placed on 
the victor's head, made of the foliage of the special tree or plant 
held sacred to the particular deity of the festival. At the Olympian 
games the crown was of olive ; at the Pythian, of bay ; at the 
Isthmian, of pine ; at the Nemean, of parsley. Victory brought 
high honour not merely to the winner, but to his native city, and the 
importance attached to this distinction is illustrated by the fact that 
Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece, held in veneration by all 
men of Hellenic blood,, wrote odes, in praise of the victors in all 
these festivals, these great gatherings of people of Hellenic race 
which were the centre of Greek national life. These assemblies 
were of a character and importance peculiar to the psople and 
their civilisation. No other clime or country can furnish anything 
resembling them. They included adjuncts from all the .arts of the 
most artistic race that ever lived. All the power, rank, wealth, 
and intellect of the land flocked to the sacred ground, and to the 
gorgeous spectacle there witnessed came men inspired by a nobler 
ambition than that of the athletic sports, valuable as these were in 
enforcing the hardy discipline ot physical training which conduced 
at once to health in peace,. and to success in battle at a time when 
men fought hand to hand,, and individual strength and skill could 
do much to turn the balance. These meetings supplied in ancient 
Greece the place of the scientific and literary congress, the art 
exhibition, the publisher, and the platform of the modern world, for 
the interchange of opinion and the discussion of theory, and for the 
display of artistic work in every class. In the highest view, these 
festivals had an excellent moral effect in sustaining and feeding, as 
a passion, as a motive, as an irresistible incentive, the desire of 
glory. They taught that true- rewards are not in gold and jewels, 
but in the opinions of men. Fame was thus established as a 
common principle of action, and, in the words of an eloquent writer, 
" what chivalry did for the few, the Olympic contests effected for 
the many — they made a knighthood of a people." 

The religious beliefs of the Greeks included auguries, or 
observation of the flight and song of birds, and the inspection of 
the disordered or healthy state of the entrails of animals slain in 
sacrifice, as the means of attaining knowledge concerning the will 



/ 8 A History of the World 

and purpose of the gods. The use of oracles is well known. The 
term means both the response delivered by a deity to an inquirer, 
and the place where the answer was delivered. The replies, really 
due to the intelligence of the presiding priest or priests, were 
supposed to be given by a certain divine afflatus or inspiration, 
either through a human agent, as in the frenzies of the Pythian 
utterer, and the dreams of the worshipping inquirer in the temples, 
or by the effect of divine working on certain objects, as the rustling 
of the sacred oaks or bay-tree, the sound of murmuring streams, the 
tinkling of the bronze caldrons at Uodona. The chief oracle of 
Greece was that of Apollo at Delphi, which was " Panhellenic," 
or open to all Greece. After offering sacrifice, inquirers, crowned 
with bay, delivered their questions inscribed on leaden tablets, 
many of which have been, by the way, recently discovered. The 
Pythian priestess then took her seat on a tripod, a sort of three- 
egged stool, placed over a fissure in the ground at the centre of 
the temple. From this came forth an intoxicating vapour or 
natural gas which, breathed by the Pythia, mounted to her brain 
and caused her to utter wild whirling words, which the attendant 
priest interpreted as the oracle's answer, and handed to the inquirer 
written down in hexameter verse by a poet kept for the purpose. 
Modern scepticism suspects that the whole matter was one of 
imposture. The ingeniously doubtful sense of many responses 
made the word "oracular" proverbial. There is no doubt that 
the priests were men of great skill, and were possessed of informa- 
tion which often enabled them to furnish good advice. The 
answers were deemed by inquirers to be infallible, and were 
often dictated by sound sense, justice, and reason. In early times 
the Greeks of all the Hellenic world were thus made to feel that 
they were one nation, bound to obey one divine law. The authority 
of this and other oracles declined when the struggles between states, 
and matters of war and government, caused powerful men to 
bribe the priests to deliver oracles such as the interest of the 
moment required. The Delphic oracle became enormously rich 
from the costly offerings brought as fees by the envoys of despots, 
cities, tribes, and nations, and by wealthy individuals, and in later 
historic times it was repeatedly plundered by sacrilegious con- 
querors. The Dodona oracle, the most ancient of all, was in 
Epirus, in a sanctuary dedicated to Zeus. We may conclude this 
account of a superstitious side of Greek religion by pointing out 
that the more advanced minds, the best of the Greek philosophers, 



t P I IOO-5OO B 

t until th 

:, that the |>r.; r.il union 

I 

■ 

■ 

I !>y the 

I 

■ 

I 

■ 

■ 



8o A History of the World 

of affairs. The larger part of the people inhabiting the states were 
slaves. The progress from monarchy to the republican form of 
government was often marked by a stage in which we find Greeks 
dwelling under " tyrants," meaning men, or the heirs of men, who 
attained power in an illegal way, but did not necessarily wield that 
power in a cruel or oppressive manner. Of these usurpers, men 
ruling with power above the laws and contrary to the laws, instances 
occurred at Sicyon, at Corinth, Megara, and Athens. When the 
kingly rule at Corinth ended, {be state was governed by two 
hundred noble families called the Bacchiadae. The city was a place 
of great commerce, from its position between two seas, and the 
meeting of roads from all parts of Greece. The population was 
thoroughly maritime in tastes and pursuits, and it is interesting to 
know that when troubles arose under' the Bacchiadae, young nobles 
who were discontented and were thus sources of danger at home were 
encouraged to lead out colonies and found states in which they 
might take the lead. The chief of these Corinthian colonies were 
Corcyra, now Corfu, and Syracuse, a city we have already seen 
playing a great part in Sicily against Carthage. The Bacchiadae 
were finally overthrown by a noble named Kypselus, who reigned 
as " tyrant " for 30 years (655-625 B.C.), and was succeeded in 
power by his son Periander. This man was one of the famous 
' Seven Wise Men," and under him Corinth made great progress 
in trade and in colonisation. He lived in all the state of an 
Oriental potentate, and ruled like a tyrant in the modern sense for 
the period of 40 years. This specimen of the Greek " tyrannies " of 
old will suffice. They had their rise in the Ionic cities of Asia Minor, 
where men were familiar with the spectacle of eastern despotism, 
and they rendered ultimate service in many cases to the cause of 
freedom by breaking down, in the interest of the usurper in the 
first instance, the exclusive system of oligarchs who treated the 
common people as if they were outside the state. The " tyrants " 
established new and splendid religious festivals in which all citizens 
could share, and were liberal encouragers of poetry and art. 

Turning to the history of Sparta, meaning " sown-land, " " corn- 
fields," after the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, we find the 
Spartans, so called from their capital city, settled in Laconia in the 
course of the nth century B.C. The population of this territory was 
divided into three classes. The Dorian conquerors, or Spartiatae, 
" true Spartans," dwelt in the fertile part of the territory, the valley 
of the Eurotas, and the lowlands stretching to the sea. The Lace- 



ice : ist Period (l 100-500 b.c.) 

the dwellers arntm ' nits 

:n and tilling 

their own ancestral fan on their landed and other 

ind t>> military and having no political rights. 

• 
mean "prisoners "f war," were ill-treated serl 
!, which they tilled for the benefit <>( their Spart in iiu 

ion "f the harv< st. As slaves ol hich 

et them fi toiled "ii the put. and 

tmpaign by several They were kept 

in a lition, being annually whipped to keep them in 

I of their 
ink then, nto mt'>\ a warning to the Spartan 

•heir num -aid to have 

f ' 

I he number of the I >ned at about f<>ur 

I of the S . <>r arisl 

in ti handicraft <>r trade, and the II I its may 

been two <»r three til It is 

iminant class, lived Ii 
ntry. They did not form a teni 
the whole number of inhabitants. 1 d them with 

HeloU with the most bitter hatred. 

on the ii luntry. The 

■ 
te m tinti 
that 

I whom .ing 

n us 
nil 
■ 1 whom it 

I 

I 

[{ 

I 



82 A History of the World 

without debate. The Council of Elders or Seriate had also juris- 
diction over capital crimes. At a time two centuries or more later 
than Lycurgus, the five Ephors, or Inspectors, gained a great 
increase of power and the authority of the kings became a mere 
shadow. The Ephors had then a large control over the actions of 
every individual, including the kings, and over legislative, diplomatic, 
and military affairs. By the legislation of Lycurgus, every Spartan 
and Lacedaemonian family received an hereditary landed estate, 
which could not be sold. The number of the Spartan families at 
this time is given as about 9,000, of the Periceci or Lacedaemonian 
families as about 30,000. 

The social system established by Lycurgus was of a truly extra- 
ordinary character. For the Spartiatae, the land became a drill- 
grouiid from the cradle to the grave. Under this relentless discipline 
all weakly and deformed children were put to death. At the age 
of seven, the boys were taken from their mothers and trained 
to arms by state-officials. The hardships endured by the youth 
have made " Spartan discipline " proverbial. Music and poetry of 
a warlike character, including the songs of an Ionian bard named 
Tyrtaeus,. were the only things taught beyond gymnastics and 
endurance. Modern Sybarites have said that it is no wonder 
Spartans were always ready to die for their country, because such 
a life could not have been worth living. Manhood brought no 
relief. The married men, as well as the single, were drilled every 
day ; they messed together, on the coarsest food, at a public table, 
and slept in barracks. The women were trained in gymnastics, 
and became as hardy as the men, loving bravery and endurance, 
hating cowardice and softness of character, and ever ready to give 
their sons to death in their country's cause. The end in view 
was attained. The Spartans became the first soldiers in the old 
Greek world, and they have left not a building or work of art 
worth seeing, not a line of prose or verse worth reading. They 
were made into tools of the state, patriotic and warlike machines. 
The withering moral influence of the system, of the hateful restraints 
imposed upon and endured by men who boasted of being free 
amongst a host of slaves, had its natural effect. The whole history 
of Sparta shows only four eminent men — Brasidas, Gylippus, 
Lysander, Agesilaus — not one of whom attained eminence within 
his country's jurisdiction. This oligarchical republic, as it really 
was, purchased for the government a prolongation of its existence 
by the sacrifice of happiness at home and dignity abroad. The 



Greece: ist Period (iioc— 500 b.c.) 83 

Spartans, domineering, arrogant, rapacious, and corrupt, cringed 
to the powerful, and trampled on the weak. They betrayed their 
allies at every turn. With complacent infamy they never showed 
either gratitude or resentment. They bartered, for advantages 
confined to themselves, the interest, the freedom, and the lives of 
those who had done them the most faithful service. They took 
bribes from Persia, the standing foe of Greece. With mean 
jealousy of merit even in their own ranks, they regarded a citizen 
who served them well as their deadliest foe. The ascetic training 
which was a constant struggle against nature and reason, the vain 
attempt to extirpate natural appetites and passions, only repressed 
external symptoms, and left the instincts common to mankind, 
debarred from their natural objects, to prey on the disordered mind 
and body. Hence it was that distinguished men of Sparta, in 
spite of every external restraint, often displayed a kind of madness 
in their public conduct. The institutions of Lycurgus, a man who 
never considered that governments were made for men, and not 
men for governments, aimed at and effected a lifeless equality 
instead of free movement, but they did secure for Sparta a stability 
of rule denied to all other states. Their conservative spirit did, 
at any rate, keep Sparta from internal revolution, and the military 
training enabled her, for a lengthy period, to overcome all Greek 
and " barbarian " forces on the field of battle. 

The first historical achievements of Spartan arms were those of 
the two Messenian wars waged 743-723 and 679-668 B.C. These 
struggles, of a desperate character, carried on by Dorians against 
Dorians, involved nearly the whole Peloponnesus. The Messenians 
were aided by the people of Arcadia, Argos, and Sicyon, who feared 
for their own independence. The Spartans had Corinth and Elis 
as allies. It was in the latter of these contests that the Spartans, 
when even their spirit was failing, were encouraged by the heart- 
stirring songs of Tyrtseus, the Ionian poet. The hero of the first 
war, on the Messenian side, was king Aristodemus, who slew 
himself at last when all resistance was hopeless. The end of that 
struggle came with the storming of Ithome, a strong fortress on a 
mountain of the same name, and afterwards the citadel of the town 
of Messene. Messenia then became tributary to Sparta, and for- 
feited some of her territory. In the second war, Aristomenes, the 
Messenian champion, endured a siege for 1 1 years in the mountain- 
fortress of Eira, from which the hero, with his sons and some of 
his followers, at last cut their way out and escaped abroad. The 



84 A History of the World 

conquest of Messenia made Sparta the leading power among Dorian 
states. The best of the land came into Spartan hands. Many of 
the people fled to Sicily, and colonised Zancle, afterwards called 
Messana. The others were reduced to the condition of Helots, and 
Messenia vanishes from history for three centuries. Masters of 
Peloponnesus, in its southern half, from sea to sea, the Spartans 
then turned their arms against Tegea and Argos. The Tegeans 
at first defeated the Spartan troops, and made some of the prisoners 
till the land in the chains brought from Sparta for Tegean limbs. 
The end was that Tegea became Sparta's faithful ally, acknowledg- 
ing her headship in southern Greece, while Tegean troops, in 
recognition of the brave resistance made, formed the left wing of 
the allied army. The Argives were driven from their southern 
territory, and the leading position of Sparta was confirmed. 

We must pass swiftly over the early history of Athens. The 
rule of kings, at a very early period, gave way to that of nobles, 
the Eupatridae or " well-born," the executive government being in 
the hands of Archons (" ruling men "), who were chosen by the 
nobles from their own body, and, by the year 683, had become nine 
officials, annually chosen. The Archon Eponymus, meaning " he 
from whom the year is named," was president of the body ; the 
Basileus, or king of the sacrifices, was high-priest; the Polemarchus, 
"war-leader," became afterwards war-minister; the other six, called 
Thesmothetae, were judges. The first archon, or Eponymus, was 
the special representative of the majesty of the state, and acted as 
guardian of orphans and heiresses, and of the rights of inheritance 
in general. The Polemarch had also charge of strangers who- settled 
in Attica and of freedmen. Oligarchical oppression of the mass 
of the people, and factious contests among the nobles, who were 
great landowners in the plain-district of Attica; the democratic 
peasants of the hill-districts ; and the coast-inhabitants, a moderate 
middle party in politics, showed the strong need for political reform. 
The man for the time was ready. Solon, of the "Seven Wise Men" 
of Greece, one really deserving the title, was born about 640 B.C., 
son of a noble but impoverished sire. He took up trade, and 
travelled much, gaining both material and mental wealth. A good 
writer, at first of graceful and amatory, and then of stirring " Tyrtsean " 
verse, he first gained high credit with his Ionian countrymen in the 
war with Dorian Megara (610-600), by his dashing conduct as 
leader of an expedition which regained for Athens the isle of 
Salami's, hereafter to become of immortal fame. Called by the 



Greece: ist Period (1100-500 B.C.) 85 

united voice of the people of Attica to devise remedies for mischiefs 
and to frame a constitution in the capacity of chief archon, Solon 
nobly illustrated his own motto, " Nothing in excess," by a graceful 
compromise between democracy and oligarchy, and, as a constructive 
statesman, rivalled the greatest legislators of the world's history. 
His work was taken in hand in 594 B.C. New laws in behalf of 
the embarrassed abolished interest, and thus relieved debtors of 
a great part of their burden ; lowered the standard of the currency ; 
annulled all mortgages and put every landowner in full possession ; 
placed a limit on great accumulation of lands in the same tenure ; 
and abolished servitude for debtors. A comprehensive code of 
laws dealt with all the relations of public and private life, and burst 
the bonds which had hitherto kept most of the Athenians in a state 
of political and legal pupilage. The new law-giver then, in his 
desire to give the poorest class some control over the officials and 
the law, divided the people into four classes, according to property. 
The democratic character of this arrangement is seen in the fact 
that property was substituted for birth as a qualification for the 
higher offices of the state. The three higher classes, possessed of 
a yearly income from land of value from at least 750 down to 
225 bushels of corn, had to provide the land-army of Attica. The 
highest class, the men of 750 bushels and upwards, could alone fill 
the chief offices of state ; the second and third classes could hold 
minor posts. The fourth class, including all below the property- 
standard of 225 bushels, furnished the rowers in the triremes, the 
war-galleys of three banks of oars, hereafter to be the salvation of 
Greece in war against Oriental power, and the bulwark of Athenian 
empire. These citizens of the fourth class were, however, placed 
on the straight road to democratic power by having the right of 
voting in the general assembly which elected the public officials, 
passed sentence on their conduct at the end of their year of office, 
and debated and decided on legislation and other matters submitted 
to it by the Council, including the question of peace or war. This 
famous body, the Ecclesia, or General Assembly of the People, was 
composed of all classes of citizens. The Council or Senate com- 
prised 400 men, chosen annually by lot, to prepare business for 
discussion and decision in the Ecclesia. The lower courts of justice 
were composed of jurors, sitting to the number of several hundreds 
in each case, selected from a body of 6,000 citizens above 30 years 
of age, chosen annually from the Ecclesia. The famous Areopagus, 
a body of judges composed of archons retired from office, had 
7 



86 A History of the World 

the guardianship of the laws and of public morals, with jurisdiction 
in all grave criminal cases. There were many other regulations 
made by Solon concerning the power of fathers over children, the 
personal and domestic affairs of citizens, sacrifices, public amuse- 
ments, marriage, education, and slaves. The persons at Athens 
who had no political rights were the metceci, or resident aliens, mostly 
foreigners engaged in trade, paying a fixed sum for the privilege, 
and liable to public burdens, including military service ; and the 
slaves, purchased aliens and their descendants, whose lives were 
protected by Solon's legislation, with an appeal to the magistrates 
against ill-treatment. Freedmen, or emancipated slaves, had the 
same position as the metceci. The slaves and resident aliens 
formed the great majority of the inhabitants, the estimate for Athens 
in her most prosperous days being 90,000 citizens, 45,000 resident 
aliens, and 360,000 slaves. We may observe that the fourth class of 
citizens, or the owners of land yielding less than 225 bushels, or 
having no land, was largely composed of day-labourers in the 
country, artisans, sailors, and city-tradesmen. The members of the 
first three classes served in war as heavy-armed and armoured 
infantry ; of the first two, in case of need, as cavalry, furnishing their 
own horses ; and members of the first class supplied ships for the 
fleet at their own expense. These liabilities to service — the state- 
officials also receiving no pay — formed the only regular taxation of 
citizens. In cases of need, an income-tax or special contribution 
levied on the first three classes was called into play, but the ordinary 
revenue of the state came in later days from tribute received from 
subject-allies, customs-duties and harbour-dues, the alien poll-tax, 
and from the rich silver mines of the state at Laurium in the south 
of Attica. 

Some years after Solon had settled affairs in Athens, and had 
left Attica for foreign travel, the revival of factions led to the 
establishment of a "tyranny" in the Greek sense. A clever and 
ambitious noble named Peisistratus, by craft and intrigue, obtained 
the support of the largest and poorest class of the citizens, and 
usurped supreme power in 560 B.C., leaving the constitution of Solon 
untouched in its forms. After two periods of exile caused by a 
coalition of the nobles and the moderate party, he finally established 
himself in 541, and ruled till his death in 527. His sway was of 
a mild character, and he was an excellent patron of literature and 
the arts. His son Hippias, who succeeded to his power, became 
a cruel ruler after the murder, for a private wrong, of his brother 



i • Period ( 1 10^-500 1; 87 

it in 510 1 .< . by nobles b< 
irmy, I for the < 

Athenian d 
1 If at the popular 

lerable < h titution, d< . 

that 

nd ten new ti 

or local -commun 
I x-.ti influence >>( the aristoi 
en up by tlw^ The ( tuncil 

hail ico new m< ! l>y fifties from . 

tn'lx.-. I /en to a numb r >>( the me/aa, the 

and imi|> irtant offi d in the 

hold military 
i by turn 

icnt of foreign ;it: lally 

a. <ir banishment 
man th 

• by 
it, in nam n for an 1 

. .a men who might 

I .tt the 
tuld return with full • 
•ul<l only t.ikc place when the Council 
! that tl r to the 

•nl the i' ' 

■ 

■!. I 

4,00 



88 A History of the World 

Chapter III. — 2nd Period : The Persian Wars, and Struggles 

AMONG THE GREEK STATES FOR SUPREMACY (500-338 B.C.). 

We have alieady stated the provocation given by the Greeks, in 
499 B.C., to the mighty Persian potentate Darius I., by the part 
which Athenian troops had in the burning of his western capital 
Sardis. For several years his forces were employed, as we have 
seen, in the reconquest of the revolted Ionian cities on the west 
coast of Asia Minor, and in 492 B.C. he dispatched a naval and 
military expedition against Greece, seeking vengeance for the insolent 
outrage perpetrated by this petty western people. The fleet of his 
commander, Mardonius, was shattered by a storm off Mount Athos, 
and the land-forces were so severely handled by the Thracians that 
a speedy retreat to Asia was made. Darius, before a new invasion, 
sent envoys in 491 to the Greek islands in the /Egean and to the 
mainland states, claiming " earth and water " in token of submission. 
Nearly all the islands and most of the states yielded to his demand. 
At Sparta and Athens the heralds were not only defied but slain. An 
armament of 1,200 galleys and transports conveying 100,000 infantry 
and 10,000 cavalry, under Darius' nephew Artaphernes, and an older 
general, Datis the Mede, with the guidance of the expelled tyrant 
Hippias, left the Ionian coast in the summer of 490. The isle of 
Naxos was occupied, and the chief city was utterly destroyed. The 
gates of Eretria, in Euboea, were opened by traitors on the sixth day 
of siege, and the city was levelled with the ground, most of the 
people being sent in chains to Asia. Flushed with success, the 
Persians then, by the advice of Hippias, bore southwards for Attica, 
and about the last week of September their forces landed on the 
coast near Marathon, 22 miles north-east of Athens. They found 
themselves in a little crescent-shaped plain about six miles long from 
north-east to south-west, and two miles broad, in the centre, between 
the hills and the sea. On the heights was gathered a Greek force 
composed of about 10,000 heavy-armed Athenian infantry, in helmet, 
breast-plate, and greaves, carrying a shield, a long spear, and short 
sword. With them stood in array a gallant band of 1,000 Platseans, 
also heavy-armed, the whole regular force of the little Boeotian city 
which alone came to the help of the men of Athens. They were 
there unasked, impelled by feelings of friendship strong, as Plataea's 
later history proved, even unto death, in gratitude for Athenian pro- 
tection which, a few years before, had rescued their birthplace from 



I Pci 

Id .ill the 
lent than the march of this little column of hen* 

i>>n. 

•und, 
1 by the it Pentel 

on tl f the silver ^ t r n > of sea between Attica and Eul 

with the thousand ships which had bro 
• med m ith 
the fl forty nations thai Darius, from the 

•m the I ixine, and bej 

. in the whole history of the world, 

the m tdern reader the thrilling and 

I he battles usually styled 

st tyranny, arc not to 
I with this world lI event, the salvatioi 

itic principle power! 

•. 
lominion and nura 
d by the renon i lost uniform \ 

i ry foe, but we 1. »te the purport of th( 

t. The nobl take, 

trembling in the ball 

a world united under one 
.1 l>, 
14 A good mastei On 1 

l bade h 

All the of the h 

! up, all 

mankind ritual 

imount, 

I 

for futUl 





92 A History of the World 

the Greek armour came here into play, and the utmost bravery of 
the Persians in rushing upon the Greek spears only increased the 
carnage. At last the lords of Asia turned their backs and fled to 
the shore, and another fierce contest arose when the Greeks, dashing 
after them to the water's edge, assailed the invaders as they were 
hastily launching the galleys. The enemy, fighting now for their 
very lives, made even harder battle than before. Callimachus the 
Polemarch was killed, with another general, and it was in this final 
struggle that the brother of ^Eschylus, as he grasped the ornamental 
work on a galley-stern, had his hand struck off by an axe. Seven 
galleys only were taken, and the skilful Datis, saving the rest, 
pushed off and started for the western coast of Attica, in hope of 
taking the city unawares and unprotected, before the victors should 
return. Then came one of the remarkable incidents of this great 
day. The Persians and Athenians had scarcely parted, after the 
conflict on the beach, when men of both armies saw a flash of 
light on the summit of Mount Pentelicus, now glowing red in the 
sunset rays. The flash was the reflection of the setting sun on the 
burnished surface of an uplifted shield. It was rightly interpreted 
by Miltiades as a signal from traitors at Athens for the Persian fleet 
to hurry round to the western coast. He started with most of the 
men for Athens, and, marching by the light of the autumnal moon, 
now at the full, had his troops arrayed on the heights above the 
city when Datis and the fleet sailed up in the morning to the 
harbour. Thus foiled in its purpose, the Persian armada started 
back for the Asiatic coast. 

The Spartan reinforcement reached the ground after the battle 
was over, while the Persian dead yet lay there. 2,000 spear- 
men, starting immediately after the moon was full, had covered 
the 150 miles between Sparta and Athens in the space of three 
days. Too late to share the glory of the action, they were allowed, 
at their own request, to visit the field. After gazing on the corpses 
of the enemy, and praising the Athenians for their deeds, they 
returned to Laceda;mon. The number of the Persian slain ex- 
ceeded 6,000 ; the Athenians had to mourn the loss of 192. The 
number of Platceans who fell is not stated, but it cannot have been 
large, as they fought on the left wing, which was not broken 
during the contest. The disproportion of slain on both sides, 
which is familiar to Englishmen from the instances of Crecj, 
Poictiers, and Agincourt, was mainly due to the protection afforded 
by the Greek armour and to the difficulty experienced by the 



Greece : and Period (500-338 b.c.) 93 

Persians in getting at men standing firm in their ranks, with spears 
projecting several feet from the line. When Miltiades hurried with 
most of the victorious Greeks back to Athens, Aristides was left 
with his brigade to bury the dead, and to guard the prisoners and 
the spoil. The Athenian custom was to deposit the bones of all 
who fell fighting for their country in each year in a public sepulchre 
situated in the suburb of Athens called the Cerameicus. A special 
exception was made, for the first and last time in Athenian history, 
in favour of the men who died at Marathon. The slain were 
buried on the battle-field, and a lofty mound was raised over them 
on the plain. Ten columns were erected on the spot, one for 
each of the Athenian tribes, and on the monumental column of 
each tribe were graven the names of those of its members who 
had fought and fallen in freedom's cause. 600 years later, the 
antiquary Pausania,s read those names. The columns have per- 
ished, but the mound remains, a testimony for all the ages of the 
world. A separate mound was raised over the bodies of the slain 
Plataeans, and another over those of the light-armed slaves who 
had fallen. It is needless to say that Marathon remained a name 
of magical power for the Athenians. An enduring effect was left 
on the Greek mind, an effect greater than that of any outward 
monument or celebration. An Athenian army had looked in the 
face of the great king's hosts, had fought and conquered. The 
charm of the Persian name was broken, and henceforth the turban, 
the trousers, and the caftan were regarded as signs of cowardice 
and effeminacy. Through all the prosperous days of Athens, 
through her period of decay, and for centuries after her political 
fall, the day of Marathon was regarded as the brightest of the 
national existence. Nothing was omitted that could keep alive 
the remembrance of a deed which had first taught the Athenian 
people to know their own strength by measuring it with the power 
which had subdued most of the known world. The consciousness 
thus awakened fixed their character, station, and destiny. Super- 
stition, ennobled in this case as a natural blending of patriotic 
pride with the piety of gratitude towards the fallen, caused their 
countrymen to deify the spirits of these dead Athenians. Religious 
rites were paid to them by the inhabitants of the district. Six 
centuries later Pausanias states, with full belief, that the battle- 
field was haunted at night by supernatural beings, with the snorting 
of unearthly chargers, and the clash of invisible combatants. The 
belief has survived by many centuries the change of creeds, and 



92 A History of the World 

the Greek armour came here into play, and the utmost bravery of 
the Persians in rushing upon the Greek spears only increased the 
carnage. At last the lords of Asia turned their backs and fled to 
the shore, and another fierce contest arose when the Greeks, dashing 
after them to the water's edge, assailed the invaders as they were 
hastily launching the galleys. The enemy, fighting now for their 
very lives, made even harder battle than before. Callimachus the 
Polemarch was killed, with another general, and it was in this final 
struggle that the brother of ^Eschylus, as he grasped the ornamental 
work on a galley-stern, had his hand struck off by an axe. Seven 
galleys only were taken, and the skilful Datis, saving the rest, 
pushed off and started for the western coast of Attica, in hope of 
taking the city unawares and unprotected, before the victors should 
return. Then came one of the remarkable incidents of this great 
day. The Persians and Athenians had scarcely parted, after the 
conflict on the beach, when men of both armies saw a flash of 
light on the summit of Mount Pentelicus, now glowing red in the 
sunset rays. The flash was the reflection of the setting sun on the 
burnished surface of an uplifted shield. It was rightly interpreted 
by Miltiades as a signal from traitors at Athens for the Persian fleet 
to hurry round to the western coast. He started with most of the 
men for Athens, and, marching by the light of the autumnal moon, 
now at the full, had his troops arrayed on the heights above the 
city when Datis and the fleet sailed up in the morning to the 
harbour. Thus foiled in its purpose, the Persian armada started 
back for the Asiatic coast. 

The Spartan reinforcement reached the ground after the battle 
was over, while the Persian dead yet lay there. 2,000 spear- 
men, starting immediately after the moon was full, had covered 
the 150 miles between Sparta and Athens in the space of three 
days. Too late to share the glory of the action, they were allowed, 
at their own request, to visit the field. After gazing on the corpses 
of the enemy, and praising the Athenians for their deeds, they 
returned to Lacedsemon. The number of the Persian slain ex- 
ceeded 6,000 ; the Athenians had to mourn the loss of 192. The 
number of Platreans who fell is not stated, but it cannot have been 
large, as they fought on the left wing, which was not broken 
during the contest. The disproportion of slain on both sides, 
which is familiar to Englishmen from the instances of Crecj, 
Poictiers, and Agincourt, was mainly due to the protection afforded 
by the Greek armour and to the difficulty experienced by the 



Greece : 2nd Period (500-338 b.c.) 93 

Persians in getting at men standing firm in their ranks, with spears 
projecting several feet from the line. When Miltiades hurried with 
most of the victorious Greeks back to Athens, Aristides was left 
with his brigade to bury the dead, and to guard the prisoners and 
the spoil. The Athenian custom was to deposit the bones of all 
who fell fighting for their country in each year in a public sepulchre 
situated in the suburb of Athens called the Cerameicus. A special 
exception was made, for the first and last time in Athenian history, 
in favour of the men who died at Marathon. The slain were 
buried on the battle-field, and a lofty mound was raised over them 
on the plain. Ten columns were erected on the spot, one for 
each of the Athenian tribes, and on the monumental column of 
each tribe were graven the names of those of its members who 
had fought and fallen in freedom's cause. 600 years later, the 
antiquary Pausania,s read those names. The columns have per- 
ished, but the mound remains, a testimony for all the ages of the 
world. A separate mound was raised over the bodies of the slain 
Platseans, and another over those of the light-armed slaves who 
had fallen. It is needless to say that Marathon remained a name 
of magical power for the Athenians. An enduring effect was left 
on the Greek mind, an effect greater than that of any outward 
monument or celebration. An Athenian army had looked in the 
face of the great king's hosts, had fought and conquered. The 
charm of the Persian name was broken, and henceforth the turban, 
the trousers, and the caftan were regarded as signs of cowardice 
and effeminacy. Through all the prosperous days of Athens, 
through her period of decay, and for centuries after her political 
fall, the day of Marathon was regarded as the brightest of the 
national existence. Nothing was omitted that could keep alive 
the remembrance of a deed which had first taught the Athenian 
people to know their own strength by measuring it with the power 
which had subdued most of the known world. The consciousness 
thus awakened fixed their character, station, and destiny. Super- 
stition, ennobled in this case as a natural blending of patriotic 
pride with the piety of gratitude towards the fallen, caused their 
countrymen to deify the spirits of these dead Athenians. Religious 
rites were paid to them by the inhabitants of the district. Six 
centuries later Pausanias states, with full belief, that the battle- 
field was haunted at night by supernatural beings, with the snorting 
of unearthly chargers, and the clash of invisible combatants. The 
belief has survived by many centuries the change of creeds, and 



94 A History of the World 

the shepherds of the neighbourhood still hold that spectral warriors 
meet at midnight on the plain, and declare that they have heard 
their shouts and the neighing of the steeds. Art was called in to 
commemorate the day whose achievement had broken for ever 
the spell of Persian invincibility that had paralysed the minds of 
men, the unequalled victory which had secured for mankind the 
intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the 
enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendency 
of the great principles of European civilisation. In the age of 
Phidias and Pericles the rock of the Acropolis, the citadel of Athens, 
was crowned at the eastern extremity by a temple of " Wingless 
Victory," now supposed to have taken up her abode for ever in the 
city. In that shrine there may still be traced on the frieze the 
figures of the Persian combatants with their lunar shields, bows 
and quivers, curved scimitars, loose trousers, and Phrygian tiaras. 
The walls of the Stoa Poikile (" Painted Colonnade ") at Athens 
were adorned by Polygnotus of Thasos, an Athenian citizen, with 
fresco-paintings of the battle, and centuries afterwards the figures 
of Miltiades and Callimachus at the head of the Athenians were 
conspicuous there. In the background the Phoenician galleys were 
seen, and nearer to the spectator, the Athenians and the Platoeans, 
the latter distinguished by their leathern helmets, were chasing 
routed Asiatics into the marshes and the sea. In concluding this 
narrative of one of the greatest events of history, we must not fail 
to record the gratitude of Athens towards the Platasans. They were 
made the fellow-countrymen of the Athenians, citizens of Athens, 
except as regards certain political functions, and from that time 
forth, in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were 
offered for a joint blessing from the gods upon the Athenians and 
the Plataaans also. 63 years later, during the Peloponnesian war, 
in 427 B.C., Platsea paid a dire penalty for the crime of being 
the friend of Athens in that struggle. Attacked by Thebes, an 
ally of Sparta, and forced to surrender, all the male population was 
slain, and the women were sold as slaves. 

Themistocles and Aristides now became the leading statesmen 
in Athens. Themistocles, one of the chief founders of the power 
of the commonwealth, was a man of wonderful mental resources. 
Sprung from the ranks of the people, he had a political genius at 
once tortuous and profound. He was marvellously quick and wise 
in foreseeing events, and most ingenious and prompt in devising 
means to attain the ends which he had in view. This intensely 



1 Period 

. that I 

ntrymen ' 

fixed on marii 

■ 

n 
i 
■ ■ 
■. nh it th* I - 

jualled i. • II 

re limit and equipped in the 
in order l the prosperit) of the 

■ 
H 

■ 

I 



96 A History of the World 

war. Xerxes, king of Persia, son of Darius I., invaded Greece in 
480 B.C. with a naval and military armament so vast that, without 
attempting to criticise the alleged numbers, running into millions 
of men, we may take as mainly true the statements of the Greek 
historian which relate the gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and 
despotic power : the bridges across the Hellespont, roads for armies 
spread upon the waves ; the canal for galleys cut through Mount 
Athos, in rounding which the fleet of Darius had been wrecked 
12 years before; the streams drunk dry, the provinces exhausted 
to supply food for the invading host. The defence of Greece rested 
mainly upon Sparta and Athens. To the congress held at the 
Isthmus of Corinth in the autumn of 481, Argos and Achsea, from 
hostility to Sparta, sent no deputies, and Argos even favoured the 
Persian cause, as Thebes did, from her hatred to Athens. Plataea, 
of course, was at the side of Athens, and Thespian, Thessaly, and 
the Peloponnesian states, save Argos and Achaea, helped the 
common cause. No aid came from the chief colonies. By land 
no effective resistance could at first be made. Leonidas, a Spartan 
king, died bravely at Thermopylae in July 480 B.C., with his 
300 Spartiatae and a few hundreds of Thespians who refused to 
leave him. The land-force of Xerxes swept onwards, destroying 
Thespiae and Plataea, in Bceotia, and receiving the forced submission 
of the whole country. During the three days of fighting at 
Thermopylae the fleets had been engaged indecisively off Artemisium, 
at the north of Eubcea, but the Persians lost 200 ships in a storm, 
and, in a second day's encounter, the Greeks severely handled the 
enemy, retreating on the third day to the Gulf of Salamis. As 
the Persian military host, in irresistible numbers, drew near, the 
Athenians abandoned their city, the whole of the people, carrying 
what they could in their hands, being conveyed on ship-board to 
neighbouring islands and places of safety on the coast. Xerxes 
at last took revenge for his father's wrong received at Sardis. Athens 
was burnt with all its shrines. The Spartans, during this time, had 
kept the Peloponnesian forces at the Isthmus of Corinth, where 
they began to build a wall across, leaving their Athenian allies to 
their fate. The matter was decided in the great sea-fight at Salamis, 
where nearly 400 Greek vessels met about double that number of 
Persian. The defeat of the invaders was largely due to the over, 
crowding of their vessels, and Xerxes retired by land with a large 
part of his army, which suffered much from hunger and disease. 
The great day of Salamis is remarkable in connection with the 



P i.e.) 

int in ti. 

I i 

Themisto I 

th<. 

Mardonius, 

■ 
winter in '1 In l 

where 1 1 1 ■ and unp 

in ranks, pul 

forth tlieir w: the I^tlr i in 

. ,, with about 30,0 3 ! infantr] 

l 

90,0 lUt IO.OC 

with 

I 

I 



98 A History of the World 

wiih the duty of preserving the tombs of the slain Greeks, and had 
their territory, on which the battle had been fought, declared sacred 
ground. The successes of the Greeks did not end here. They 
had already taken the offensive on the coast of Asia Minor, and 
on the very day of Plataea they gained a great victory at Mycale, 
north of the mouth of the river Maeander, defeating the Persians 
on land, and destroying by fire the whole of the ships which their 
commander, remembering the issue of Salamis, had hauled up on 
the beach, afraid to meet Athenians on the sea. The Ionian cities on 
the coast were thus freed from Persian sway, and joined the Hellenic 
league, along with several of the islands, as Samos, Lesbos, and 
Chios. The grand triumph of Greece over Persia in this whole 
contest, amidst much cowardice, treachery, and vacillation in various 
Greek states, was due partly to the mistakes of the Persian 
commanders, and mainly to the courage, enterprise, and resolution 
displayed by the Athenians from the beginning to the end of the 
war, under the leadership of Themistocles. The energy of Athens 
had been, on the whole, well backed in military affairs by Sparta, 
and by the Peloponnesian states which were wont to act in union 
under her. 

Athens now began to receive her reward in the hegemony of, or 
ascendency in, the Greek states, a position which she held for over 
60 years. The city was rebuilt and enlarged, and, through the 
foresight and craftiness of Themistocles, was strongly fortified, in 
spite of jealous opposition from the Spartans. The harbour of 
Piraeus was made thoroughly defensible, and the maritime and 
naval greatness of Athens was established. The real supremacy of 
the body of the people at Athens came at this time, as Aristides 
had foreseen, from the fact of all able-bodied citizens, rich and poor 
alike, having served on board the fleet in the great war. The 
poorer citizens claimed the right of holding state-offices, and it was 
Aristides himself who, in 477 B.C., met their views in carrying a 
measure by which all citizens were admitted to the archonship and 
other high offices of the state. The Hellenic confederacy was now 
formed, with Athens as its political head. This " Confederacy of 
Delos " was designed to exclude Persian power and influence from 
the ^igean Sea. The religious centre was the temple of Apollo in 
Delos, where the treasury was placed and the assemblies were held. 
Aristides was appointed the first treasurer, with the duty of assigning 
to each state its share of the general contribution. At first some of 
the smaller states contributed money instead of ships and crews, 



Greece : 2nd Period (500-338 B.C.) 99 

and in time most of the others, in order to avoid the trouble and 
danger of naval service, adopted the same course. The position of 
these states was thus changed for the worse. They became tributary 
subjects of Athens instead of free allies, able to defend themselves, 
in case of need, by combining their naval forces ; and further 
mischief came when in 459 b.c. the treasury was removed from 
Delos to Athens, a step which gave her really the headship of 
an empire, instead of the leadership of confederated free states. 

The war against Persia in the eastern Mediterranean continued, 
and in 466 Kimon, son of Miltiades, gained a double victory, by 
land and sea, over the Persians at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, 
on the south coast of Asia Minor. Three years before this date, 
in 469, aristocratic jealousy and Spartan intrigue had caused the 
exile, by ostracism, of Themistocles, and Kimon became leader of 
the oligarchical party. He was a good general and an honest 
statesman, favourable to Sparta, and anxious to see rivalry between 
her and Athens ended by their alliance against Persia, the common 
foe. The new political leader, with the spoils of Persia, began to 
construct the important two long walls connecting Athens with the 
harbours of Pirseus and Phaleron. He won popularity by the lavish 
expenditure of his own great wealth in public works for the benefit 
of the citizens, such as porticoes, groves, and gardens, while he was 
munificent in feeding the indigent and helping deserving traders or 
artisans with loans. In 459 b.c. Kimon was exiled by the ostracism, 
and a new democratic statesman came to the head of affairs. 

This was Pericles, a man of noble family, whose name has 
acquired additional brilliancy from his association with the period 
called " The Age of Pericles," the great days of Athens in literature 
and art. Steps towards the aggrandisement and, as it proved, the 
corruption and decline of the Athenian democracy, had already 
been taken in the law carried by Ephialtes which deprived the 
court of Areopagus of all its former political control, and confined 
it to judicial functions, and in the measures passed for paying 
citizens who served in the army or acted as jurors, and for bestowing 
alms out of the public treasury upon the poor at the public festivals. 
In supporting these measures Pericles seems to have had an honest 
belief that it would be well for the state that the body of the citizens 
should receive political education by taking part in the decision of 
all kinds of public matters in the Ecclesia and in acting judicially, 
and he was anxious to keep the oligarchs, who favoured Spartan 
views, from having any control in affairs of state. The mistake 



ioo A History of the World 

made was that ic was impossible to secure a succession of wise 
and conscientious leaders like himself, and that human nature, 
always capable of corruption, was in fact corrupted. 

An idle, capricious, light-minded body of men, secure of sub- 
sistence and pleasure at the public expense, was invested with the 
supreme control of affairs. More ready to criticise the speakers in 
the assembly than to weigh calmly the probable results of measures 
brought before them, greedy of flattery, easily led away by promises, 
careless and hasty in decision, they became the supporters, after 
the time of Pericles, of a crew of demagogues. Evil ambition was 
aroused ; the allies, really subject-states,. were alienated by extortion, 
and the sway of the Athenian democracy became jealous, oppressive, 
cruel in vengeance on revolted cities and Greek foes. For the 
present, however, the new democratic empire flourished. The 
stately, eloquent, imperturbable Pericles, the "Zeus of Athens," 
ruled by the sheer force of his individual character, by his superiority 
of native genius and acquired knowledge. This central figure of 
Grecian history, wielding at will a restless democracy by an oratory 
never surpassed for condensed and vivid imagery, saw his country 
raised, by his own influence over the energy and ability of her 
citizens, to a great height of power in the Greek world. War was 
waged with various success against Sparta and the supporters of 
her oligarchic system. ^Egina was conquered, revolted Eubcea and 
Samos were subdued, new colonies were founded, the fortifications 
of the city were completed by the construction of a third long wall, 
parallel with the one leading to the Pirosus. The magnificent 
buildings rose on the Acropolis and elsewhere in Athens, the 
remains of which are the admiration and despair of modern 
architects. 

In 449 B.C. peace with Persia was made after a battle at another 
Salamis, in Cyprus, where the Athenians defeated the Persians by 
land and sea. The Persian monarch, Artaxerxes I., was compelled 
to recognise the independence of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and 
to agree that his fleet should not navigate /Egean waters, nor his 
troops approach within three days' march of the Asia Minor coast. 
Such, within 41 years of the victory at Marathon, was the 
splendid result attained by the spirit which that success evoked. 
The work and influence of Pericles should be studied in the 
pages of Grote, the greatest historian of Greece, who was the 
first to fully reveal Ancient Athens to the modern world. We may 
here briefly note some facts which set forth that wonderful republic 



Greece : 2nd Period (500—338 b.c.) ioi 

at the height of her political power. The democracy of Attica 
controlled 1,000 miles of the Asiatic coast, from opposite Cyprus 
to the Bosphorus, with nearly all the islands of the ^Egean Sea, 
and Corcyra and Zacynthus [Corfu and Zante) in the Ionian. The 
empire included the colonies on the shores of Macedonia and 
Thrace, and the coast of the Euxine from Pontus to the Tauric 
Chersonesus {Crimea). The eastern coasts of the Mediterranean 
were commanded by the Athenian galleys, carrying in war-time 
between 60,000 and 70,000 rowers and marines. In 457 B.C. we 
find 200 galleys and a land-force, the crews and soldiers together 
numbering 40,000 men, helping Egypt in a revolt against Persia. 
At the same time Athens had squadrons on the coasts of Phoenicia 
and Cyprus, and yet maintained a fleet in home-waters strong 
enough to win a naval battle against Peloponnesian foes off 
^Egina, with the capture of 70 galleys. An original inscription at 
the Louvre in Paris, graven on a votive tablet to the memory of 
the dead, erected in that year by one of the ten Attic tribes, 
bears striking testimony to the energies of Athens at her best period, 
when she was at once seeking conquests abroad and repelling 
enemies at home. This record states, with emphatic simplicity, 
that of the Erechthean tribe there fell in 457 B.C. "men slain in 
Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, at Haliae (on the coast of Argolis, in 
Peloponnesus), in yEgina, and in Megara." 

It was jealousy of Athenian power and the discontent of some 
of her own allies which caused the outbreak in 331 B.C. of the 
struggle known as the Peloponnesian war, embittered throughout 
by the racial differences of character between Dorians and Ionians, 
and the political feuds of democratic and oligarchic parties, often 
within the same city-walls. The nobles were for Sparta and the 
people for Athens, and the contest was disgraced in many instances 
by the internecine fury with which it was waged, as Athens strove 
to change the form of government in other states, and Sparta 
strenuously upheld the aristocratic party. The resources of Athens 
have been just described ; Sparta had with her all the Peloponnesus, 
except Argos and Achaea, which remained neutral, and was also 
supported by Bceotia, Locris, Phocis, Megara, Ambracia, and the 
island of Leucas (Sa/ita Maura). The Spartans and their allies 
were superior in military, and the Athenians in naval strength. 
In the first part of this war, which lasted, with a nominal truce, for 
27 years, we deal briefly with events from 431-421 b.c. During 
this period the Peloponnesians repeatedly invaded Attica with a 



102 A History of the World 

force which the Athenians could not meet. The country-people 
took refuge in the city and Piraeus, or encamped in the wide space 
between the long walls which connected, as we have seen, Athens 
with her harbours. The overcrowding caused the outbreak of a 
plague which, in 429, brought an irreparable loss in the death of 
Pericles, and swept away large numbers of the citizens and slaves. 
A man named Cleon, of fluent speech and loud voice, then became 
the popular champion. Strongly denounced in his own day by 
Thucydides the great historian and by the comic poet Aristophanes, 
a man of thoroughly patriotic but old-fashioned views, it is very 
doubtful how far Cleon deserves the character usually assigned to 
him of being a shifty, unscrupulous demagogue. While the 
Lacedaemonian forces ravaged the Attic cornfields, olive-grounds, 
and vineyards, the Athenian fleet made reprisals on the coasts of 
Peloponnesus. In 428 the important city of Mytilene, in Lesbos, 
revolted, and the Athenian assembly, after the surrender of the 
place to the force sent thither, caused above 1,000 of the 
aristocratic party to be slain, and the city to be utterly destroyed, 
the lands being divided among Athenian citizens. The fate of 
Platsea, at the hands of the Thebans, in 427, has been already 
mentioned. Phormio, an Athenian admiral, gained some striking 
naval victories over greatly superior forces, and in 425 Cleon, aided 
by a blockading fleet, captured nearly 300 Lacedaemonians, including 
120 Spartiatse, in the island of Sphacteria, on the south-west coast 
of Peloponnesus, and brought them prisoners to Athens. The 
invasion and ravaging of Attica was then stopped for some years 
by the Athenian threat of putting to death the captives, who 
included many young warriors of the best Spartan families. The 
reputation of the great military republic was tarnished by the proof 
that Spartan soldiers would rather surrender than die. The 
Athenians then conquered and held the island of Cythera, off 
the south-east coast of Peloponnesus, as a vantage-point whence 
they could ravage the Spartan lands at pleasure. In 423 B.C. one 
of the best of Spartans was sent by land to Macedonia and Thrace, 
to assail the Athenian supremacy in that quarter. This was the 
noble-minded and skilful Brasidas, excellent alike in diplomacy and 
war, a man of eloquence rare indeed at Sparta, just, wise, liberal, 
probably the only Spartan who ever made himself esteemed and 
beloved outside his own country. His glorious career was a short 
one. His presence caused several towns to revolt from Athens, 
and the important Amphipolis was captured. Cleon was sent with 



• 2nd Period (5 103 

with 
i-Tt.il wounds. We may 1 
that m 4^1 th 

.it I . the mainland, inva< tia, and were utterly 

helium. It was in the flight from this 
that the 1 

>n of m<»t hrilhant talent-, versatile, !i> eiiti 

n m. inner and I the life of the 

■ dity. 
! a d< l»t incurred isly 

his life m batt e. I ; ■ • 
r of the war party at A nild- 

tern; N killed in war. ut I mid and 

in, to bring about in \; 1 tiled 

nly nominally 

•v the head of the war-part] I the Athenians to 

■ 

•l ■-.]< by 

the 

In .4 in the < ruelty 
»wn in the treatment 

not liable to the penalties of r> \ It. I i< ; 
ibmit, an>l the conquest of the territory 1 by the 

f all the adult m I the 

■ 
:it in th- 

. the 
r in 

I 

1 



104 A History of the World 

the decaying Persian empire would then be an easy prey. Dr. 
Arnold, the sagacious historian of Rome, has pointed out that 
Athenian success at Syracuse might thus have greatly influenced 
modern nations in making Greek instead of Latin the chief element 
of the languages of southern Europe and of France, and the laws 
of Athens, rather than of Rome, the foundation of law for the civilised 
world. In the summer of 415 B.C. a magnificent armament left the 
Greek shores for Sicily, composed of 134 triremes, or war-galleys 
with three banks of oars, carrying 36,000 men including the crews. 
The soldiers had among them the large number of 5,100 hoplites, 
or heavy-armed infantry. The commanders were Nicias, Alcibiades, 
and Lamachus, the last a brave honest soldier. The enterprise was 
doomed from the first to failure. Syracuse, promptly attacked, as 
Lamachus advised, must have fallen. The generals wasted time 
in going about seeking for allies among the Sicilian towns. Then 
Alcibiades, the one man who might have brought success to the 
enterprise, was recalled to stand his trial on a trumped-up charge 
which he had offered to meet before he started. Too wise to trust 
himself to the tender mercies of factious political foes, he escaped 
to Sparta, and, in a selfish desire for revenge, not only urged her to 
renew the war, but induced her, with fatal effect for his country, to 
send out a competent general to assume the direction of affairs at 
Syracuse. Meanwhile Lamachus fell in a skirmish. The vacillating 
Nicias, alternately over-cautious and careless, had nearly effected the 
complete investment of the place by sea and land, when, in 414, 
Gylippus the Spartan arrived in Sicily, gathered a force of heavy- 
armed infantry and irregulars, and made his way into the city of 
Syracuse through an unfortified gap left by Nicias. The besieged 
were at once filled with new hope, and Gylippus soon drove the 
Athenians from their chief positions on the high ground. The eyes 
of Greece were now fixed on events in Sicily, and large reinforce- 
ments arrived from Corinth, Thebes, and other states, both of men 
and galleys. A fleet was soon ready in the great harbour of the 
Syracusans, while the Athenian ships were rotting from want of repair, 
and the slaves and sailors from subject-states were deserting. Nicias, 
in September, wrote home begging to be relieved of his command, as 
he was suffering from illness, but he was foolishly retained. In the 
spring of 413 Gylippus attacked the Athenians by sea, and, after a 
repulse in one action, gained a complete victory, while his land-army 
seized the naval camp and stores of the Athenians on the beach. 
The Syracusans now looked forward to the speedy and utter destruc- 



G IP I 1 500-3 ; 105 

but the) piril and 

l l>v the 
I, by the ad> i< 
lea in Attn a, the Athenians 

• :1 armam I .1 fresh 
indcr the comrn ind of theii most daring and n 

i • ible in in had d llent 

in Acarn mia and other pai 

ibly, and not Cleon, who really deserved 

the 1 He was .1 true pal 

unknown in I intry 

in t!. as the foi mer, 

after the 5 nd struck 

>t with terroi Jleys 

und with ind martial musi< A 1 h u 

ene <>f bright pro Athenian ^ 

well-planned thenes, made by 1 the high 

id held by I I, in the moment 

■ 
the same kind of f the ;th and 

Alfouera, inn:. The 

with hca\ • 

in well-grounded no| 

>\ the utt< r l'is^ of the Athenian 

• ire, in a 

and ■ 

• 1 all who did no* 

put 

I 

: 



106 A History of the World 

indomitable iVthenians did not despair. They sent a powerful fleet 
to sea, and transferred the seat of war to the Hellespont and the 
eastern side of the /Egean. The fickle Alcibiades, quarrelling with 
the Spartans, intrigued for his return to Athens, and he was recalled 
there early in 411, after a change of constitution which limited the 
franchise to men possessing a certain amount of property, and also 
abolished the payments for attending the Ecclesia, or public assembly, 
and the law-courts. The revolt of Eubcea at this time caused severe 
loss to the Athenians in depriving them of one of their chief 
sources of corn-supply, and nothing could now be grown in Attica, 
dominated by the enemy from Decelea. Alcibiades now made some 
amends for the grievous harm done by him to his country. He 
won two great sea-fights (411 and 410 B.C.) over the Peloponnesians, 
in the last of which their fleet was almost destroyed. The coasts 
of the Hellespont and Propontis (Sea of Marmara) were subdued 
for Athens, and in 408 the restless man returned in triumph to 
Athens, where he was appointed commander-in-chief by land and 
sea. The end of the war was, however, near at hand. The able 
and ambitious Spartan Lysander received the naval command, 
and in 407 defeated the Athenian fleet at Notium, in the Gulf of 
Ephesus, during the absence of Alcibiades, the commander, on 
a foraging raid. The Athenians at once dismissed him from their 
service. Three years later he ended his remarkable career in 
Phrygia, murdered by a band of assassins employed for an unknown 
reason. In 406 the Athenian fleet won a great naval victory at 
Arginusse, east of Lesbos, but in the following year their naval 
armament was surprised and overpowered at ^Egospotami, in the 
Hellespont, by Lysander. The tidings of this terrible blow, which 
destroyed Athenian power on the coasts and islands, and set up 
the oligarchical constitutions so hateful to the democracy, was 
received at Athens, now the sole possession of the republic, with 
cries of grief, first arising in Piraeus, and transmitted by the guards 
on the long walls up to the city. 3,000 Athenian prisoners 
had been slaughtered by the brutal victor, and the centre of 
Greek culture was soon invested by land and sea. In March 404 
Athens was forced by famine to surrender to Lysander and to king 
Agis, commanding the army. The Peloponnesian war ended with 
the downfall of the Athenian empire, the destruction of the long 
walls and the fortifications of Piraeus, the surrender of all war-galleys 
except 12, the overthrow of democracy, and the establishment of 
an oligarchical rule known as that of the "Thirty Tyrants." 



Greece : 2nd Period (500-338 b.c.) 107 

A reign of terror in Athens, with a Spartan garrison in the 
Acropolis, lasted for eight months, after which the violence and 
cruelty ended, with Spartan consent, in the oligarchs being overthrown 
in 403 by the return of fugitive democrats under Thrasybulus. 
The constitution of Solon, or moderate democracy, was restored, 
but the old political spirit of the Athenians, in their best days, 
had departed for ever. In 399 the fame of Athens was for ever 
sullied by the martyr-death of Socrates in the cause of truth. 
Little interest attaches to the events of Grecian history during 
the remainder of this period. Sparta had become, for the time, 
supreme. She warred against Persia, and against Greek confeder- 
ates roused by her tyranny. In 395 her forces, invading Bceotia, were 
defeated, with the death of Lysander. In the following year the able 
king Agesilaus, recalled from his work in Asia, restored matters for 
Sparta on land by the victory of Coronea in Bceotia over the forces of 
the allies. At the same time, the Athenian commander Conon, with 
a combined Persian and Athenian fleet, destroyed the Lacedaemonian 
fleet at Cnidus, off the coast of Caria (Asia Minor). Sparta began 
to decline in power. Her " Harmosts " (governors) were expelled 
from the islands and the Greek cities in Asia Minor. The coasts 
of the Peloponnesus were ravaged. The long walls at Athens, with 
the help of Persian money, were rebuilt by Conon, who restored, for 
a brief space, the maritime strength of his country. In 387 the 
disgraceful peace of Antalcidas, so called from the Spartan admiral 
who went as envoy to Susa, was concluded between the Greek states 
and Persia. The Greek cities of Asia Minor, so gloriously freed 
after Marathon, Salamis, Platcea, and Mycale, were given up to the 
effete Oriental power, and the suicidal struggles of the Greek states 
now brought them to the humiliation of submitting to Persian 
decision the terms on which they were to make peace with each 
other. 

A new brief phase of political power in Greece came with the 
rise of Thebes to supremacy. In 379 the exiled democrats of that 
city returned from Athens, and under the leadership of the nobly- 
born, wealthy, admirable patriot Pelopidas expelled a Spartan 
garrison from the Cadmeia or citadel. A body of troops, including 
'the famous " Sacred Band " of youths, was formed and trained with 
discipline and tactics excelling anything hitherto seen in Greece. 
Agesilaus was dispatched from Sparta against the patriots, whose 
leadership, both in civil and military matters, was shared by 
Pelopidas' firm friend Epaminondas, chief of Theban generals and 



io8 A History of the World 

statesmen, one of the greatest characters of antiquity. The Spartan 
king failed in his operations, and then Athens, forming a new 
league of above 70 cities of the /Egean Sea, became the ally 
of Thebes, and the Spartan fleet was destroyed by the Athenians 
in several engagements. By 374 the Spartans had been driven out 
of all the Boeotian cities which they held with garrisons, and the old 
Boeotian League was restored with Thebes at its head. A jealous 
feeling then caused Athens to quit the Theban alliance, but the 
new power, under Pelopidas and Epaminondas, showed that she was 
capable of standing alone. In 371 the Spartan supremacy was 
destroyed at the battle of Leuctra, in Bceotia, where Epaminondas 
and his friend utterly defeated the brave Spartan king Cleombrotus, 
who died on the field. The Thebans were outnumbered in this 
action by two to one, and their fame in Greece rose to its height. 
In the following year the two great Thebans invaded Peloponnesus, 
and, though they failed in an attack on Sparta, they ravaged 
Laconia, created an Arcadian League, with a new city, Megalopolis, 
as its centre, and restored Messenia to independence, after three 
centuries of subjection to Sparta, with a new city, Messena, as capital. 
Thus was Sparta brought down from her proud position, so long 
maintained, to the ordinary level of Grecian states. In following 
years Peloponnesus was repeatedly invaded by the Thebans, who 
also did good work for freedom in other quarters by delivering 
Thessalians from the tyranny of Alexander of Pherse. In one of 
these expeditions, in 364, Pelopidas fell as victor during the pursuit, 
and Epaminondas was left alone to his work as statesman, 
diplomatist, and brilliant commander in the field. With him 
Thebes rose to a brief renown, and with his fall she fell to rise no 
more. In 362 the hero, invading Peloponnesus for the fourth time, 
entered Arcadia to meet Spartan invaders, and, heading a charge 
which broke the enemy's phalanx, he received a deep wound with a 
javelin in the breast. Assured of the Theban victory and informed 
that his life would end through loss of blood when the weapon was 
extracted, " I have lived long enough," he cried, and plucked it out 
with his own hand. A nobler patriot and soldier than Epaminondas 
never lived and died. 

A new power in the north was soon rapidly rising into view. 
In 359 B.C. Philip II. became king of Macedon. His country, 
rich in mines of gold and silver, in oil and wine, had not been 
recognised as " Greek " or " Hellenic " by the other states, not 
only as having people of mixed race, but because they lived a 



Greece : 2nd Period (50C-338 b.c.) 109 

rough country-life, hunting and farming, unversed in literature or 
art. Archelaus, king from 413 to 399, was a wise and vigorous 
ruler, who introduced Greek culture, and improved his realm by 
building cities and making roads. The Macedonians were obedient 
subjects, hardy in life, brave in war, the right material for a man 
like Philip to mould into a prosperous and powerful nation. This 
monarch, whose fame has been, perhaps, somewhat unduly over- 
shadowed by that of his illustrious son, was a man of great 
acuteness, energy, eloquence, and decision. He had, in his youth, 
been for three years a hostage at Thebes, and had received invaluable 
lessons from Epaminondas in military and civil affairs. He quickly 
had a standing professional army, the chief strength of which lay 
in the famous phalanx of heavy-armed infantry, carrying swords, 
shields, and long pikes or spears. In the original Lacedaemonian 
or Spartan phalanx the men stood 4, 6, or 8 deep. The Theban 
formation was an improvement on that, and the Macedonian was 
the best of all. The soldiers, armed with spears 21 feet long, 
were drawn up in 16 ranks. Each rank was placed 3 feet in rear of 
the one before it. The spears were held at a part 15 feet from the 
point, whence it is clear that the spears of all the first 5 ranks 
would project respectively 15, 12, 9, 6, and 3 feet beyond the bodies 
of men in the front rank. As the ordinary Greek spears only projected 
6 feet, nothing could withstand the charge, on level ground, where 
the formation could be maintained, of such a body of troops as the 
phalanx. This need for level ground, and its lack of flexibility, or 
capacity to wheel quickly or face about, were the defects which 
afterwards made it succumb to the Roman legion, but in Greece 
the phalanx proved irresistible, and it enabled Philip's successor to 
conquer all the Eastern world. With such a formidable power in 
prospect as a possible foe, the Greek states, with suicidal folly, 
engaged in various civil wars, the details of which have no interest, 
and rendered themselves helpless when the hour of conflict came. 
In vain did Demosthenes, one of the greatest orators of all time, 
warn his countrymen at Athens, in his Olynthiac orations, his 
Philippics, and other speeches, of what was surely coming on Greece 
from the north. By successful war, by cajolery, by bribery of venal 
party-leaders, Philip won state after state to his rising empire. 
Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidsea, and Olynthus, Greek colonial cities in 
Macedonia, were seized. He gained possession of the gold-mines 
in Thrace, subdued Thessaly and Phocis, and secured the pass of 
Thermopylae for his invasion of the south. The Athenians, in 341, 



no A History of the World 

had a gleam of success in compelling the Macedonian conqueror 
and intriguer to raise the siege of Byzantium, which commanded 
the Euxine from whose countries they drew their supply of grain. 
The end came in 338 B.C., when the armies of Athens and Thebes, 
allied through the influence of Demosthenes, were utterly defeated 
by Philip at Chseronea, in Bceotia, where his son Alexander, 
then 18 years of age, decided the battle by a charge which anni- 
hilated the Theban "Sacred Band." The Macedonian victor then 
marched into Peloponnesus, and deprived Sparta of. a great part 
of her territory for the benefit of the other states. A national 
assembly held at Corinth, from which the Spartans alone were 
absent, appointed Philip leader of the Greeks against the Persians, 
with absolute power. 

Chapter IV. — 3RD Period : Gr.^eco-Macedonian Age, 
down to Roman Conquest (338-146 b.c). 

Two years after Chaeronea the murder of Philip by a Macedonian 
noble in 336 b.c. left the throne to his son, one of the greatest 
heroes, military commanders, conquerors, and statesmen in the 
whole range of history. Alexander was but 20 years of age when 
he inherited the means of retorting upon the East, with complete 
and phenomenal success, her invasions of the West. His magni- 
ficent army of 40,000 men included the phalanx ; the guard, a 
body of infantry armed with the ordinary Greek spear and shield; 
two cavalry-divisions, one heavy-armoured and one more lightly 
equipped ; a body-guard or staff of young nobles, — all the above 
composed of native Macedonians. There were also regiments, 
both foot and horse, of Greeks, and bodies of light-armed troops 
from the barbarian regions adjacent to Macedonia. An artillery- 
corps worked engines for hurling stones both in sieges and in 
battles, and on the battle-field, apart from sieges, Alexander was 
the first to employ such troops. The whole force made up a 
regular professional army in the modern sense, not fighting as a 
citizen-militia, but as strictly disciplined soldiers thoroughly devoted 
to the consummate general who, with the additional authority of 
sovereign, led them to war. Nothing like it had ever been seen 
in the world. Space is lacking for a full consideration of the 
character of Alexander the Great. Pope's summary " Macedonia's 
madman " is of course absurd, only applicable to certain outbursts 
of fury caused by excess in wine, or the intoxication of marvellous 



I Pci .' Ill 

«.f i : 

• 
ihc 

I his l>n i the 

1 and purified it, and 

held fiim ' 

him 

■ . 

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In l 
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ooo 

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I 



ii2 A History of the World 

and won a final and decisive victory at Arbela, not far from 
the ruins of Nineveh.* Darius fled northwards, to be slain by 
a treacherous satrap, and the conqueror took Babylon, Susa, 
Persepolis, and other great Persian cities. In 330 Alexander 
reached Hyrcania, and traversed Parthia. His progress constantly 
saw the foundation of new cities as centres of Greek culture. In 
329 Bactria was reached, and two years later the swift and sweeping 
conqueror was in India, where, in 326, he defeated Porus, an Indian 
king, in the Punjab, at the river Hydaspes (Jhehim). Eastwards 
again he sped, until his wearied soldiers declined to follow, and 
in 325 a fleet constructed for the purpose took the army and its 
leader down the Indus to the ocean, where they were surprised 
by seeing the ebb and flow of the tide. The admiral, Nearchus, 
coasted westwards and discovered the entrance to the Persian Gulf, 
while his master, with terrible suffering to the troops and much 
loss, led the army through the desert of Gedrosia {B chichi si an). 
In 324 Alexander was again in Susa (capital of Persia proper), and 
made known his great plan of spreading Greek civilisation throughout 
the East, and founding a Macedonian-Persian universal empire, 
in which there should be entire political equality of the Eastern 
and Western populations. This scheme shows the greatness of 
Alexander's conceptions, as a statesman of comprehensive views 
and of prudent toleration. The religion of all the conquered was 
respected, and the civil administration was largely left to native 
rulers. Many Macedonian officers married Persian ladies of good 
family, and 10,000 of the soldiers took Persian wives. The execution 
of this magnificent plan of civilisation was cut short by the great 
man's death of fever at Babylon, in the summer of 323 B.C., when 
he was 32 years of age. 

The effect of Alexander's conquests was very important and 
long-enduring. In the Greek settlements which were planted and 
the cities which were founded by himself and his successors, the 
Hellenic element soon became predominant, and thus schemes of 
civilisation, of commercial intercourse, and of literary and scientific 
work were blended with military enterprises and with systems of 
civil administration. The Greek language became that of all cultured 
persons in Egypt and the Eastern world, and the native tongues 
only retained their place as provincial dialects. The noble oratorical 
and literary instrument of Pericles and Plato was the language used 

* For the details of this great battle, readers are again referred to Creasy's 
Fifteen Decisive Battles. 



: Pel i i ; 

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ii4 A History of the World 

poems (" idyls ") in his honour, was the Syracusan Theocritus, the 
creator of bucolic poetry as a branch of Greek literature. The 
Syrian dominions of Alexander became a kingdom under the 
Seleucidas, descendants of the first king Seleucus, one of his 
generals, with a capital first at Seleucia, on the Tigris, and then at 
Antioch, on the Orontes. We have already seen, in the history of 
the Jews, an important part of the annals of this realm, which we 
shall meet hereafter in Roman times. Macedonia, the third of 
these important kingdoms, brings us back to the period of Greek 
decline in the political sense. The end of the struggle of the 
" Diadochi," or " Successors," saw Cassander in possession of 
Greece and Macedonia. This son of Alexander's trusted officer 
Antipater succeeded to a posicion of power in Greece won by his 
father in the " Lamian war" of 323-322, so called from a town in 
Thessaly at and near which the military operations were chiefly 
carried on. The contest arose from an attempt of Greek states, 
headed by Athens, to free the country from Macedonian supremacy 
immediately after the death of Alexander. The democratic leaders 
at Athens, the immortal Demosthenes, and his pupil in oratory 
Hyperides, induced the states of central and northern Greece, 
except Bceotia, to take up arms in the common cause of Hellenic 
freedom. The struggle was short, sharp, and decisive, and involved 
tragic issues to the lives of the two Athenians whose names cast a 
parting gleam of glory over the period which ends in political 
extinction. After some success at the outset, the allies were totally 
defeated by Antipater at Crannon in Thessaly, and the states in 
succession submitted to the victor. Athens was compelled to 
receive a Macedonian garrison, and to give up her democratic 
constitution, the possession of citizenship being based on a property- 
census. Demosthenes fled, and, being closely pursued by the 
emissaries of Antipater, slew himself by poison in the temple of 
Poseidon, regarded as an inviolable asylum by all true Hellenes, in 
the island of Calauria off the coast of Argolis. Hyperides was slain 
at ^Egina by the orders of the Macedonian conqueror, who dreaded 
in his eloquence, as in that of the illustrious master, the power 
which stirred patriotic hearts. 

The oppression exercised by Macedonian kings caused the last 
efforts for Greek independence to be made by confederations of 
states, called the Achaean League and the ^Etolian League. The 
Achaean confederacy was originally that of ten cities on the northern 
coast of Peloponnesus, and we have hitherto had no occasion to 



Greece: 3rd Period (338-146 b.c) 115 

notice it in the Greek history. In its new form, as revived in 
280 B.C., a vigorous attempt was made to get rid of the " tyrants " set 
up in these cities, and in other states, by Antigonus of Macedonia. 
An important personage arose in Aratus of Sicyon, a brave 
general and skilful tactician, a statesman excelling in negotiation, 
and a thorough patriot. At the age of 20, in 251 B.C., he freed his 
native city from an usurper of rule, and brought it into the League, 
giving the confederacy thereby a great accession of power. In 245 
he was elected " General," or " President," and brought into the 
League many other states, including Corinth, which he delivered 
from the Macedonians about 240, and Athens and ^Egina. 
Nearly all the Peloponnesian cities also joined the body except the 
sullen, isolated Sparta, which had entirely degenerated from her 
ancient simplicity of life, and was in the power of a wealthy oligarchy. 
Attempts were made to revive her olden system. In 244 Agis IV., 
one of the associate kings, thus sought to reform the state, in renew- 
ing the decayed institutions of Lycurgus, abolishing debts, and 
dividing the land, so as to create a large new body of citizens. The 
landed property had fallen into possession of about 100 families, 
and the number of " Spartiatse," or full citizens, did not exceed 700. 
At the command of the Ephors, who sought to please the corrupt 
aristocracy, he was assassinated by his misnamed colleague Leonidas. 
Cleomenes, son of this Spartan murderer, reigned from 236 to 222, 
and had more success in a like effort, his period of rule being a 
final burst of sunshine amid the clouds of his country's closing days. 
He had married the widow of Agis IV. Endowed with a noble soul, 
strengthened and purified by the best philosophy of Greece, and 
being a man of great energy, he gained military glory by successful 
warfare against the Achaean League. In 226 he turned upon the 
home-government, overthrew the Ephors, and made the constitution 
wider by admitting to full citizenship a number of the Periceci, 
The laws of Lycurgus were enforced, and Sparta for a very brief 
space of time had the semblance of her olden self. The League, 
under Aratus, called in the help of Macedonia, and in 221 B.C. 
Cleomenes, utterly defeated by their combined forces at the battle 
of Sellasia, north of Sparta, fled to Egypt, and died there in the 
following year by his own hand. In 208, after the death of Aratus, 
Philopcemen of Megalopolis in Arcadia, one of the few great men 
produced by Greece in this time of her decline, became " General " 
of the Achaean League. He had fought with distinguished courage 
at Sellasia. In 201 he again filled the post of president of the 



i r6 A History of the World 

League, and defeated Nabis, "tyrant" of Sparta. After serving in 
the Cretan wars, he returned to Greece, and was again Strategus or 
General of the League in 192. The Romans were by this time 
assuming a position of control in Greek affairs, and Philopcemen was 
too prudent to provoke them to conflict. He had the credit of 
dealing the death-blow to the Sparta which had once been the most 
powerful Hellenic state. In 18S he captured the city, razed the 
fortifications, made an end of the institutions of Lycurgus, and com- 
pelled the citizens to live under the Achaean laws. 

The ^Etolian League, deriving its name from the large territory 
in the west of central Greece, inhabited at the time of the 
Peloponnesian war by many " barbarian " tribes, was formed against 
Macedon about 284 B.C., and included Acarnania, Locris, part of 
Thessaly, and some towns in Peloponnesus. It had never the 
importance of the Achaean League and needs no further notice. 

The end of the eventful history of ancient Greece is now at 
hand. Roman interference brought the great Power into collision 
with Philip V. of Macedon, who reigned 220-178 B.C. He was 
an able man, skilful in war, but no troops could resist the legions 
of Rome. In 197 he was totally defeated by the Roman general 
Flamininus at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly. In the following year — a 
vain mockery for those who could read aright the signs of the times 
— Greece was declared " free and independent " of the Macedonian 
power by Flamininus at the Isthmian Games. This act, really a 
transfer of supremacy from Macedon to Rome, was received by the 
Greeks with the warmest gratitude. Henceforth Rome's policy was 
to foster quarrels between the Greek states, so as to diminish the 
influence of the Achaean League, and Roman and anti-Roman 
parties arose in the cities. In 171 b.c. another " Macedonian war" 
arose between the Romans and Perseus of Macedonia, son of 
Philip V. Three years later he was totally defeated at Pydna, in 
his own country, by the Roman general vEmilius Paulus, and after- 
wards died a wretched captive in Rome. In 147 Macedonia was 
divided into four districts, and became virtually a part of the Roman 
empire. It is instructive to know that the conqueror of Macedon, 
a man who is held up to us as one of the models of Roman "virtue, 
which at Rome, indeed, meant "manhood," "warlike courage,' 
obeyed a decree of the Senate in giving up 70 little towns of 
Epirus to be sacked and destroyed by his troops after all hostilities 
were at an end. Deceit was used in order to prevent resistance or 
escnpe, and this horrible cruelty was all perpetrated in one day and 



The Greatness of Athens 1 1 7 

one hour, with the selling into slavery of 150,000 human beings. 
The long agony of Greece drew to an end when the Achaean League 
was brought into conflict with Rome. The capture of its leading 
city, Corinth, by the Roman Consul Mummius in 146 B.C., was 
attended and followed by the slaughter of most of the citizens who 
had not fled, the selling of the women and children into slavery, 
the ransacking of the temples and the private buildings, the 
destruction of the whole place by fire, and the carrying away to 
Rome of countless precious works of art. The whole of Greece at 
last became a Roman province as " Achaea," the governments of the 
several cities being organised on a democratic basis, and a praetor 
being appointed over the whole. Athens, Delphi, and one or two 
other towns, alone remained free. At some places, as at Corinth, 
Plataea, and Megara, Roman " colonies " were planted. The land 
had become a mere wilderness from war ; for days' journeys in 
succession the territory was depopulated or only haunted by banditti; 
and 3,000 fighting men were all that Greece could furnish for the 
Roman legions. From this melancholy spectacle we turn with relief 
to a view of Athens in her best days, and to a slight acknowledgment 
of the debt due to her from the civilised world. 



Chapter V. — The Greatness of Athens. 

One of the greatest of modern literary artists, a man who well knew 
his subject, has declared that "there seems to be every reason to 
believe that, in general intelligence, the Athenian populace far 
surpassed the lower orders of any community that has ever existed. 
To be a citizen in Athens was to be a legislator, a soldier, a judge, 
one upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest 
tributary state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, 
both of agriculture and of trade, were performed by slaves. The 
commonwealth supplied its meanest members with the support of 
life, the opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement. 
Books were indeed few, but they were excellent and they were 
accurately known. . . . Books, however, were the least part of 
the education of an Athenian citizen. In a vivid picture, he then 
puts before us the admirable mental training at the disposal of all 
men in the glorious city where men, as they walked the streets 
in its best days, might see Phidias, with a delighted crowd around 
him, putting up the frieze on the entablature of a portico ; might 
hear a rhapsodist, or professional reciter, surrounded by a throng of 
9 



1 1 8 A History of the World 

men, women, and children— the tears running down their cheeks, 
their eyes fixed, their very breath still — telling from Homer's lines 
how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles and kissed those hands — the 
terrible, the murderous — which had slain so many of his sons ; might 
listen while Socrates, pitted in argument against some famous atheist 
from Ionia, brought him to a stand by catching him in a contradiction 
in terms ; might be a hearer of Pericles in the Ecclesia four or five 
times every month ; and attend the theatre for the performance of 
dramas and comedies of almost the highest excellence in their class. 
Such an education was eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact 
or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, 
delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to 
the manners. The freedom of the Athenian's daily life, the 
happiness arising from the unfettered exercise of the mind in 
pursuits congenial to it, combined with native ability, produced the 
almost ideal excellence belonging to Athenian models of poetry, 
philosophical writing, oratory, and the arts. In private life, the people 
were distinguished by their courtesy, and their amiable demeanour. 
Their levity was, at least, better than Spartan sullenness, and their 
impertinence than Spartan insolence. Without submitting to the 
hardships of a Spartan education, they rivalled all the achievements 
of Spartan valour, failing in the field, from time to time, from lack 
of practice, and being long unrivalled on the sea. 

Politically dead, and destined to be in after ages the prey, for 
a season, of the least cultured and the most fanatically savage of 
modern oppressors, Athens began, in the days of her dissolution as 
an independent state, to live for evermore. She became the 
university-town for young Romans and other youths of rank, for 
all who sought the highest attainable mental culture, the chief 
college of the whole civilised world. To Athens the most promising 
youths flocked to hear the discussion of high themes, the discourses 
of philosophers, in the four great " schools." The Academic school, 
founded by Plato, who flourished from about 400 to 350 B.C., 
derived its name from the gardens and gymnasium near Athens, 
called Academeia, because the land which they occupied was 
consecrated to Academus, a mythical hero. In these groves of 
olives and plane-trees Plato discoursed of the one eternal Deity, 
of perfect goodness and wisdom. There he taught that the spirit 
of man has had a former state of existence, seeing perfect, ideal 
forms of things, the dim remembrance of which in this life is the 
only knowledge we can attain to of what is truly good and wise. 



The ( vreatness of At!. 1 i g 

I • t<> this 

mmunion 
m his philo 
is in the handling <>f 
• marvello worthy in 

wit, < ng which 

: all pagan int. ; cts. I . eminent 

..•I, we b '•. in 1 like 

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led '* tin 

• • 1. m war. This admirable 

in. m, so well known to us, not from any \\; ins own, hut 

■ 'I' his illustl :.ircr 

. I , a 
true hero m his hfc and his death. It was his work .is a ph Ho- 
le a mental or ethical system, but to teach 1 
tu.il truth m ridding then 
it, and finding a sure b now- 

•1 of .ill ill-grounded notion 1 1 iple, 

appli< all inquirers and all subje< ts of inv< 

led the ■ truth in all subsequei I the 

who, 

I introducing new 

■ 
500 ins prison through mi 

i) his fni Iling, in his 

i). in in tl in the immortality 

■ 

of ti 

in indulging I His 

with hi 

■ 



no A History of the World 

poet Lucretius, and needs no remark here. The Stoic school, 
founded at Athens about 320 b.c. by Zeno, a Greek of Cyprus, had 
its name from the place of his teaching, the Stoa Poikile already 
mentioned in connection -with the battle of Marathon. The name 
of " stoic " has become proverbial for the spirit which despises the 
external conditions of man's life, unseduced by pleasure, unsubdued 
by pain. The system is best known to modern times through the 
writings of three philosophers of the " Empire " period o v f Roman 
history — Seneca, Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. 
Virtue consisted in " living according to nature" — that is, according 
to the divine reason bestowed upon man ; favourite phrases of the 
Stoic teachers dwelt on the ideal "wise man," on "apathy" or 
equanimity of soul, on the power of the "will," the worship of 
" duty," and constant " advance " in virtue. I Stoicism held the 
government of the universe by one wise and benevolent Deity, 
and the absorption of the soul, after death, into the divine essence. 
Modern ethics have been, with advantage to mankind, largely 
influenced by a system which taught contentment, defiance of ill- 
fortune, limitation of wants, and the subjection of self to the general 
welfare, I The Peripatetic school, founded at Athens, in 335 B.C., 
by the flmous Aristotle of Stageira, a Greek colony in Macedonia, 
was ' so called either from the covered walks (peripatoi) of the 
suburban gymnasium styled Lyceum, where he taught, or from 
the deliverance of discourses whilst he was walking about \{peri- 
patetikos meaning " fond of strolling ") instead of in a seated 
position. The intellect of this great man embraced all the learning 
of his time, and his writings, largely extant, included almost all 
subjects which could interest the intellectual portion of mankind 
as the world was in his day — rhetoric, politics, ethics, natural 
history, poetry, and other matters. Aristotle, whose works have 
more directly and largely wrought on modern thought than those of 
any other ancient writer, was the greatest pupil of Plato and, as we 
have seen, the tutor of Alexander of Macedon. 

The literature of Ancient Greece is the greatest treasure, apart 
from the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, bequeathed to us from 
ancient times. The very names of writers are enough for fairly 
educated readers — so universal is the renown of these models for 
originality, richness, beauty, and force. The Greek writers were the 
first who gave themselves to the work of systematic thinking, and in 
the departments of history, logic, and ethics they laid what is still 
the foundation for modern treatment. Homer and the great writers 



The Greatness of Athens 



1 2 1 



en already named. An imi id irrepai 

tme in the almost utter extinction, thro 
r to the invention of printing, "f the I3 

: Sappho, Al< bus, and 
nt of 
P the chii literary art. 

depth of philosophy, vigour and » Herodoi 

, in his liveliness and and Xen 

narrator, arc all familiar nam. I 

it survives in soni • "t his < hief, 1 arefully 

.111 any of the highest 

Wei in to the words of the renowned 

[uoted, himself thoi inversant with the splendid 

and incomparable literature from whii li have sprun h of the 

and the wisdom, the freedom and thi tern 

I, a literature distin alike by imaginative power, subtlety 

in. "11' 
have t indirectly, all the n I the 

human il >mplishmentS and the brilliant fai 

lering tire of Juvenal ; the 11 of 

the hum< 

the ■• ;tler ; the supreme and universal excellei 

All the triumphs of truth and . 

intry anil in •-, have heen the- triumphs 

I minds have made a stand against 

i, m th< if liberty in, there has 

n her spirit in the m inspiring, 

soling by the lonely Ian p of 1 

in the o ' 1 the 

• 

iny thousands h.i. 

whii h took theii 

th in 

• il with ■ 

■ 



] 22 A History of the World 

the immortal influence of Athens." Above all, the Athenians were 
the pioneers for mankind in the path which leads to the noblest 
acquisition of the race — freedom of spirit. This is the liberty of 
soul which has delivered man from the trammels of superstition and 
the tyranny of priestcraft; which has enabled him to bring all 
matters, from the highest to the lowest, from the foundations of 
religious faith to the minutest regulations of police, to the bar of 
that reason which is God's greatest gift to those whom He created 
in His own image. The day was to come, nearly 20 centuries 
after the most glorious time of Athens, in the pride of her material 
power among the states of Greece, when the men of modern Europe, 
at the revival of learning, would draw new inspiration from that 
eternal spiritual spring, and would face boldly, with keen investi- 
gation, the claims put forward by those who stood between man and 
his Maker. The glorious result, one in which the highest interests 
of the race were concerned, was the removal for ever, from the 
necks of those who were wise enough to accept deliverance, of the 
yoke imposed by human authority which asserted itself to be divine. 
This, and not less, is the debt of mankind to that glorious republic 
of ancient days. 



BOOK III. 

ROME (? 753 B.C.— a.d. 476). 

Chapter I. — Mythical Period of Kings to beginning of 
, Punic Wars ( ? 753-264 b.c.).* 

The supreme importance of Roman history to modern readers lies 
in the fact that it is, in a large degree, the history of the world, 
if we regard history not as a mere chronicle of events, an " old 
almanack,''" but as the science of causes and effects. Rome alone 
founded an universal empire in which all earlier history is absorbed 
and out of which all later history grew. That empire included 
nearly all the civilised old world, and the breaking-up of that vast 
dominion gave rise to the chief states of the modern world. The 

* For details on the Roman religion, private and public life, and literature, 
the reader is referred to Roman Antiquities and Reman Literature, in Macmillan's 
History and Literature Primers. 



Rome: Mythical Period to Punic Wars (? 7 53—264 b.c.) 123 

language of ancient Rome is the basis of the living speech of most 
of southern and of all south-western Europe, and of France, and 
it is largely incorporated in the literary dialect of our own country. 
For ages the classical Latin, little changed, was the ecclesiastical 
language of half Christendom, and it was also, until quite modern 
days, the common language of science, diplomacy, and learning. 
The law of Rome is still quoted in our courts of law, and taught 
in our universities, and the whole jurisprudence of great European 
countries has there its source and groundwork. A city became 
an empire ; a municipal republic ruled an ever-increasing subject 
territory. When the republican government ended in the sway of 
the Caesars, the Roman citizen and the provincial were alike their 
subjects, and then the rights of the Roman citizen were extended 
to the subjects of the whole dominion. The difference is thus very 
strongly marked between the history of Greece and that of Rome, 
since in the latter we have unity from beginning to end — -the rise, 
greatness, degeneracy, and fall of a single state. In contrast with 
the endless variety of the Greek struggles between many small states, 
we have in the history of Rome a steady solemn march of power 
paving the way for the spread of a heaven-sent religious faith arising 
in Palestine, and with its oracles or sacred books using the tongue 
of Greece, but reaching us only through the agency of Rome. In 
the Roman history we witness almost unbroken progress from the 
rise of a single small city to the dominion of the world. The growth 
was slow, but the materials were solid, and the fabric was durable. 
A main cause of the prosperity of ancient Rome lay in the mingling 
of Latins, people possessed of a genius for organisation, with 
Sabines, men of rigid virtue and self-devotion. The uncertainty 
of the details of early Roman history arises from the fact that, above 
360 years later than the date (753 B.C.) assigned for the foundation 
of the city of Rome, nearly all the public records were destroyed 
after the Gallic capture of the town. The oldest annals were 
compiled more than a century and a half after the destruction of 
the records. The outline-history of the great Roman republic and 
empire which we shall here present will be, as in the case of ancient 
Greece, entirely devoid of legendary matter, and will consist of 
statements based upon satisfactory evidence. 

A brief geographical and ethnographical survey of ancient Italy 
will clear the way for what is to come. About the middle of the 
8th century B.C., which we must accept as the date for the 
foundation of Rome, we must regard the whole peninsula as divided 



124 A History of the World 

into three parts — Upper Italy, Central Italy, Lower Italy. Upper 
Italy, the great plain between the Alps and the Apennines, could 
not then be considered Italian at all. The larger portion was 
occupied by the Celtic race called Gauls, and had the name of 
Gallia Cisalpina, or " Gaul on this side [to a Roman, of course, to 
the south] of the Alps," in distinction from Gallia Transalpina, or 
" Gaul beyond [north-west of] the Alps." South-west of this 
Cisalpine Gaul lay Liguria, extending to the sea at and on both 
sides of the Gulf of Genoa, by its modern name. The Ligurians 
seem to have been distinct in race both from the Kelts and the 
Iberians, an ancient people of Spain, identified by some with the 
mysterious modern Basques of northern Spain. North-east of 
Cisalpine Gaul was Venetia, of whose people we can only state 
that they were not Keltic. Central Italy consisted of the territories 
marked on the map as Etruria, Latium, Campania, on the west ; 
Umbria, Picenum, Samnium, on the east. The Etruscans were 
the most important people in the peninsula at that time. Their 
name survives in the modern " Tuscany." These people are yet 
a mystery in their origin. Their language is entirely lost, and 
we can only say that at the time of the foundation of Rome they 
were a powerful people in a loose confederacy of 12 independent 
cities under kings called Lucumos, ecclesiastical as well as civil 
rulers, with a small close body of aristocrats holding the mass of 
the nation in serfdom or vassalage. They were highly civilised, 
as is proved by their proficiency in statuary, metal-work, ship-building, 
and architecture. They paid the greatest attention to religion, 
and furnished the Romans with various political and religious 
institutions, including the arts of divination. The other parts of 
central Italy were inhabited by Italian peoples, of Aryan race, 
and therefore akin in origin to the Greeks. The most important 
of these people were the Latins, having a league of 30 independent 
cities in historical times, and living in the plain south of the Tiber; 
and the Samnites, the bravest and most warlike of the simple, 
virtuous, and devout Sabine tribes, dwelling north-east and east 
of Latium, and destined to form an important element in the 
Roman population. We may note that Campania, on its western 
coast, had Greek colonies in the cities of Cumse and Neapolis 
{Naples). Lower Italy, consisting of Apulia, Calabria, Lucania, 
and Bruttii (wrongly given as " Bruttium "), contained so many 
important Greek colonies that it became known as Magna Graecia, 
or " Greater Greece." Among these cities were the powerful 



R • Mythical P< I Pui i< w 

: the 
Ithy inh.. 

i the 

! river in tli.it |>irt of I 

r their t< I their powerful neighbours the 

] town uas about 15 miles from the n 

I at tir^ upon a little 

1 in this 1 

1 the north the litti 
in trade. Within a century and a half of 
within the extended wall, 
lies in circuit, and a< quired in hi 
" thi Hills." The place I I the l< a<l 

Latin towns and become the head of the "l 
of the population lived by the 1 
the 

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. with the original 

:it and order 

h b wholly uncertain whether 

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N 

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126 A History of the World 

less wealth. The military and political division was now in centuries, 
or hundreds, of men, and the Comitia Centuriata, or meetings 
of the centuries, a mixed patrician and plebeian assembly, became 
for a long period the chief ruling body, electing the higher state- 
officials, repealing and enacting laws, and deciding cases of appeal 
from judicial sentences. We must carefully note that Roman citizens 
(the governing body) did not necessarily live inside the city-walls, and 
that the plebeians were not by any means wholly composed of poor 
people, but included many wealthy and respected families. 

About 500 B.C. monarchy came to an end under circumstances 
(stated in the legends to be the gross tyranny of a king of Etruscan 
race named Tarquin) which made the very word " king " henceforth 
hateful to all Roman citizens. A republic arose, with two yearly 
officers, at first called Praetors, or leaders, and afterwards Consuls, 
a word which may mean either colleagues or administrators. For 
special emergencies an official styled Dictator might be appointed 
for six months, with absolute civil and military power. The Consuls 
became at last the chief executive officers, convoking the Senate, 
presiding over its deliberations, and enforcing all decrees of that 
body and of the powerful popular assembly to be hereafter described. 
These august officials were attended abroad, in monthly turns, by 
12 men called lictors, carrying fasces, a bundle of rods betokening 
supreme power, extending in theory to corporal punishment, and 
outside the city, in the field of war, enclosing an axe as a sign of 
the martial law then exercised by the consul as having the imperium, 
or sovereignty. The consuls had the command of the armies, and, 
when the state had extended its territory beyond the borders of 
Italy, they could be appointed, at the close of their year of office, to 
chief provincial governorships as proconsuls. The Senate, composed 
at first of 300, and in later times of 6co members, now had plebeians 
from the equites, or wealthy class, admitted to its ranks. For the 
sake of clearness, we may here state what this body became in 
formation and functions when the Roman constitution was fully 
developed. The vacancies occurring by death or expulsion in this 
great assembly of life -peers, as they really were, were filled up by 
the two Censors, officials of very high rank and powers, who were 
chosen every five years, generally from ex-consuls (consulares). The 
name was derived from making the census, or register of property 
for every citizen. They had a general and arbitrary control over 
private and public morals. They could expel members from the 
Senate, knights (equites) from their order, and any ordinary citizen 



R • 1' I toP 

■ 

■ 

the state th and 

I first i 

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and, in the 

of the n f them by lot 

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r in 
with reli ial rule, and 

and dismi 



128 A History of the World 

political, between the patrician and plebeian orders. The fitness of 
Romans to create a powerful state is shown during this period by 
the wise spirit of moderation generally displayed by both parties in 
the contest for the retention of old and the acquirement of new 
power. There was rarely any violence ending in bloodshed, and 
there was no civil war. Both orders were united against foreign 
foes in time of need, and a high sense of duty to the state, as 
superior to all individual or party claims, was developed. Obedience, 
perseverance, and self-control were learned as patricians held out 
against plebeian demands until they were obliged by moral pressure 
to give way, and as plebeians strove to show themselves worthy of 
the rights which they claimed. The first trouble of the republican 
times arose from the impoverishment of plebeians through ravaging 
of their lands in war with the Etruscans. They were greatly in debt 
to patricians, and liable, on this ground, to imprisonment and 
slavery. This state of things was remedied through a peaceful 
revolt, or refusal of the plebeians to do military service for the 
state. The famous tribunate was created. These tribunes of the 
commons, who became at last ten in number, were the champions 
and protectors of the plebeians against the privileged class, the 
patricians, who held nearly all the ager publicus, or public land, both 
pastoral and tilled, acquired by conquest, and who virtually paid 
no taxes in the shape of rent. The persons of the tribunes were 
inviolable, and they could interfere to protect any plebeian from the 
injustice of an official. They could at last prevent any adminis- 
trative or judicial action by their jus intercessions, or right of inter- 
vention, and they exercised judicial functions, and convened the 
Comitia Tributa. The tribunes were elected only by the popular 
assembly, and, being soon admitted to the Senate, they could there, 
by a veto, deprive any resolution of the body {senatus-consultuni) of 
its legislative force. About the middle of the 5th century B.C. a 
temporary suspension of the constitution took place, and Decemviri, 
or Ten Commissioners, were appointed to draw up the famous code 
known as the Laws of the Tzvelve Tables, engraved on copper and 
set up in the Forum, or public place, that all citizens might have 
a safeguard against oppression in knowing what laws were those by 
which judicial functions were guided and contro'leJ. This step in 
advance subjected the patrician administration to public judgment. 
For the dates and details of successive steps in the development of 
the republican constitution, readers of this sketch are referred to any 
of the ordinary histories. 



Rome: Mythical Period to Punic Wars (? 7 5 3-2 64 b.c.) 129 

On the resumption of the ordinary constitution in 448 B.C. 
tribunes were reappointed, and a first great charter of Roman 
freedom came in the laws, carried by the consuls Valerius and 
Horatius in the Comitia Centuriata, which made piebiscita, decrees or 
resolutions of the popular assembly {Comitia Tributa), binding upon 
patricians and plebeians alike, and compelled every official, in- 
cluding a Dictator, to allow appeals from his decisions. A few 
years later, marriage between patricians and plebeians was legalised, 
die children inheriting the rank of the father. In 366 the Licinian 
laws, so called from one of the tribunes who carried them after 
an obstinate struggle of ten years' duration, gave a great victory to 
the plebeians in enacting that one at least of the consuls must be 
chosen from their order. At the same time, relief was given to 
those who had been impoverished in the Gallic invasion to be 
noticed shortly, by deduction, from the principal of debts, of 
interest already paid. From ttr's time the progress of the plebeian 
houses towards the possession of equal political rights with the old 
patrician families was very rapid. When the year 300 B.C. arrived, all 
the great civil offices — the prsetorship, the censorship, the consulship, 
the very dictatorship — were open to all Roman citizens, and the 
chief posts connected with the state-religion were put within the 
reach of the hitherto non-privileged order by an enactment 
providing that four of the eight pontiffs or high-priests, and five of 
the nine augurs, should be taken from the plebeians. The augurs, 
or officials who " took the auspices " by observing the flight of birds 
or other signs on the right or left hand, and pretended to deduce 
thence the will of the gods, had a real political importance in being 
able to delay the progress of measures in the Comitia by deciding 
that no assembly could be held, as the day was unpropitious for 
public business. The patrician order was henceforth no longer a 
legally privileged caste, but merely a social order or rank. The 
new nobility, called optimates or nobiles, included the patrician 
and plebeian families which had won most distinction as holding, 
through different successive members, the highest public offices, 
and they looked down upon outsiders who won their way to any 
of these posts as novi homines (" new fellows ") or upstarts. The 
Comitia Tributa had now become the chief legislative body, and 
the great aim of patricians who wished to interfere there was to 
win over one or more of the tribunes, and get the veto exercised 
on proposed legislation. The constitution of the Roman republic 
was thus a moderate democracy, with the power of taxation and 



130 A History of the World 

the chief judicial authority residing in the Senate. The senators 
comprised the practical statesmanship and political intelligence of the 
nation, and won renown, at many crises, by their firmness,* wisdom, 
energy, and patriotism. 

The religion of the Romans differed widely, like their character, 
from that of the Greeks. It was, as the word "religion" implies, 
a matter of obligation, of binding power, involving a feeling of 
constraint. The worship was a practical business connected with 
expediency and profit for the worshippers. The temples were 
generally erected in consequence of vows offered in times of diffi- 
culty and danger, when relief had been obtained, as was believed, 
by the interposition of some deity. The god had done his work, 
and the price was duly paid. Among the old Italian deities were 
Saturnus, the god of sowing and tillage ; Ceres, goddess of corn- 
crops ; Pales and Faunus, protectors of the flocks. Juno, the type 
of queenly womanhood, and Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, are 
attributed to a Sabine source. Juppiter (Jov-pater) represented the 
Greek Zeus, originally the Aryan Dyaus, " the bright one," and he 
was worshipped under many surnames connected with various 
attributes of supreme deity, and notably as Juppiter Optimus 
Maxunus, " the best, the greatest." Vesta was the same as the 
Greek Hestia, the goddess of the hearth and home. The domestic 
ties were very sacred with the Romans ; the Lares and Penates 
were the special deities of that shrine, the Roman's own fireside. 
The cry Pro arts et /oris, " For our altars and hearths," was the most 
stirring appeal in battle. One of the chief deities of the Italian 
tribes was Mars or Mavors, the god of " manliness," which was 
the chief virtue with the Romans, in the sense of " manly courage," 
combining duty, self-sacrifice for the state. Thus Mars, a deity 
once the god of creative power, the god of spring, after whom its 
first month (Martins, March) was named, became the war-god. 
The two-faced Janus, the god of opening and shutting, the sun-god 
who brings the day and shuts up the world in darkness, was brother 
to Diana, the moon-goddess. Venus and Neptunus need no 
description. The Roman deities were not, to their worshippers, 
living beings like the Greek, but mere abstractions, and they were 
worshipped in prayers, sacrifices, and games, in order to secure 
the goodwill or avert the anger of the gods. The college of 
Pontificcs, or priests, the chief religious power in the state, headed 
by the Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, had political importance 
as controlling the calendar, and deciding the days which were 



Rome: Mythical Period to Punic Wars (? 7 53-264 B.C.) 131 

suitable or not for the transaction of public and private business. 
The Vestal Virgins, six maidens vowed to chastity for life, having 
charge of the sacred fire of Vesta in her temple between the 
Palatine and Capitoline hills at Rome, are well known. To con- 
clude, the religion had little or no influence on private or public 
morality beyond the production of a sense of living under obliga- 
tions, the development of the idea of duty, and the strengthening 
of the habit of obedience. It was a religion of prosaic character, 
a legal piety, an anxious ritual by which the Roman constrained 
himself to meet his religious engagements; and, making him a 
better servant of the state, it largely aided the development of a 
powerful and prosperous nation. In the later times of the republic 
many foreign deities were imported from Greece and from the 
East, especially from Egypt, when the old-fashioned rites of Rome 
had lost their meaning, and new modes of worship, conducted by 
various classes of priests, aimed at arousing religious emotions 
which had little indeed to do with moral culture. The moral 
teaching which existed at Rome in later days was due to Greek 
philosophers of the various schools already described. 

It has been well said that "at the basis of the Roman character 
lay the habit of obedience to authority." " Duty " was the Roman 
watchword : law, government, order, were the sacred things in the 
best days of Rome. The undue exercise of authority by officials was 
restrained by their liability to trial and punishment at the close of 
the term of office, by the influence of colleagues, and by the force 
of unwritten custom — the mos mdiorum, or "ways of ancestors," 
for which the Romans had a high regard. It was discipline, 
reverence for commands received from rightful authority, combined 
with stubborn and unwearied energy, patriotic zeal, steadfastness 
under trial and defeat, that enabled Romans to conquer the world. 
There is one point, especially, which distinguishes the Romans 
from the Ancient Greeks — the honour paid to woman as wife and 
mother. No nation of the olden world equals them in this respect. 
The Roman matron was the true mistress of the household ; the 
spinner of wool, amongst her female slaves, for the clothing of the 
family ; the trusted and esteemed companion and friend of her 
husband; the reverenced and devoted mother of her children. 
The Roman gravity and dignity of character, the deliberate and 
ripe thought employed in forming plans which were adhered to 
with sober resolution, are also in contrast with the levity and 
fickleness of which Athens showed many examples. The Roman 



132 A History of the World 

character, on the other hand, was unsympathetic and hard. The 
foreigner, as such, was regarded as a foe. In their diplomatic 
dealings with men of other lands we find Romans constantly 
urging charges of bad faith, but they were themselves at least as 
faithless in regard to treaties and promises as any foreign peoples. 
Their great virtues were fortitude, temperance, veracity among 
themselves, spirit to resist oppression, ardent patriotism, and the 
respect for legitimate authority already referred to. The cruelty 
and the grasping nature shown in their conduct of foreign affairs 
prove them to have been wanting in charity and chivalrous 
generosity, virtues which are, indeed, mainly Christian. The 
Romans were, above all things, intensely practical, having the 
clearest utilitarian aims, to which they moved forward in a straight 
course which brooked no opposition. By their works they, long 
ages dead, speak yet to all mankind in every region where their 
eagles flew — by noble roads cleaving their way through modern 
realms ; by stately aqueducts, some of which are still in use ; by 
bridges, by excavations for draining cities, by remains of camps in 
earthwork, by fortresses whose solidity of construction yet defies the 
wind and weather. Some of the highways constructed in the British 
Isles for the march of legions and the conveyance of their heavy 
baggage at all seasons through conquered territory are still the 
basis of our best roads. The Roman engineering carried these 
roads straight to the strategical or commercial positions which it 
was needful to connect, with the piling-up of huge embankments, 
the draining of marshes, the filling-up of hollows, the spanning of 
valleys by viaducts, the tunnelling of hills, the bridging of streams. 
In Italy the great Appian Road {Via Appia, justly called Regina 
Viaria/i, " Queen of Roads ") was a causeway built with large square 
stones on a raised platform, and ran direct from the capital to the 
city of Capua, in Campania, afterwards extending to Brundusium 
{Brindisi), the port of embarkation for Greece. The Via Aurelia 
ran northwards along the coast, by Genoa, into Transalpine Gaul ; 
the Via Flaminia, through Umbria to Ariminum {Rimini) on the 
Adriatic Sea. The Via ^Emilia, passing through Cisalpine Gaul, 
carried the traveller from Ariminum to Placentia. The brick and 
tile-work structures of Roman builders, cemented with material 
which is only hardened by exposure to the air, exist among us as 
sturdy remains. Some of the finest examples are the Pharos, at 
Dover, on the heights where the castle frowns upon the silver strip 
of sea ; the cavalry-camp called Burgh Castle, in east Suffolk, near 



Roi M PcriodtoPui 

i ; the nobl< 

with lutt 

uburban l I he 50 mil< 

! 
■ 

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■ 

■ 



134 A History of the World 

night by lines of sentinels. The night, reckoned from sunset to 
sunrise, was divided into four equal "watches," and the watchword 
for the night, inscribed on small tablets of wood, passed through 
the lines, and then returned to the six tribunes, or brigadiers, each 
commanding the legion in turns for two months. It is well known 
that the great stationary camps constructed in the British Isles grew, 
in many cases, into important towns, a fact indicated in the modern 
names by various corrupt forms of the Latin castra ("camp"), as in 
Chester {the camp), Colchester, Lancaster (the camp on the river 
Lune), Exeter (Exe-ceastre, the camp on the Exe). One of the 
finest specimens of the encampment is that at Ardoch, in Perthshire, 
in the grass-grown mounds and ridges of which most of the 
Roman camp-divisions have been clearly recognised. We have 
now described the civil, military, and moral equipment with which 
the Romans started on their unrivalled career, and shall deal 
briefly with the achievements by which they created a vast empire, 
and then proceed to the period of decline which ended in the 
melting-away, through the occupation of the territories by alien 
hosts and hordes, of the gigantic political structure erected in the 
course of ages by genius and valour. 

The conquest of the /Equians and Volscians, neighbours of 
Rome, towards the end of the 5th century B.C., was followed by an 
attack on the Etruscans, the people who had once shared with 
Carthage the naval mastery of the Mediterranean. Their power 
had been declining of late by sea and land, the latter due to Gallic 
invasions from the north. A long siege of Veii by the Romans 
ended in the capture of the place, followed by the taking or voluntary 
surrender of many other towns of Etruria, and the Roman territory 
was much extended northwards. A blow came for the conquerors 
in their severe defeat by the Gauls in 390 B.C. at the battle of the 
Allia, a brook falling into the Tiber 1 1 miles north of the city. 
The enemy advanced on Rome, which was taken, plundered, and 
burnt, with the exception of the buildings on the Capitoline Hill. 
A seven-months' blockade of the fortress ended in the retirement 
of the enemy for a heavy payment in gold. It has been already 
shown how the uncertainty of events in early Roman history is due 
to the burning of the annals kept by the priests in the temples. 
The Romans soon recovered from the shock of this disaster. The 
city was rebuilt ; the ^Equians, Volscians, and Etruscans, who had 
taken up vengeful arms, were beaten ; successful war was waged 
with various Latin states, and other Gallic invasions were so repelled 



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136 A History of the World 

war, beginning in 300, saw the Samnites assisted by the Etruscans, 
Umbrians, and Senonian Gauls. In 296 the Samnites, by immense 
exertions, placed three armies in the field, one to defend their own 
country, one for Campania, and one which was, in a fine strategical 
movement, led by Gellius Egnatius northwards to join the con- 
federates in Etruria. The Romans raised 60,000 men, and in 295 
fought a decisive battle, under the consul Decius Mus, at Sentinum 
in Umbria. The army of the coalition was scattered to the winds. 
Two years later the gallant Pontius of Samnium, who had spared 
the lives of the Romans taken at the Caudine Forks nearly 30 
years before, was defeated and taken prisoner. Conducted to Rome, 
he was put to death at the general's " triumph " — a national crime 
clearly proving that, in their dealings with foreigners, the Romans 
knew naught of justice, magnanimity, or humanity. In 290 B.C. 
the war ended with the exhaustion of Samnium, and the Romans 
were complete masters of central Italy. They strengthened their 
position, as usual, by the foundation of colonies in conquered 
territory. In 285 another coalition was formed, and Rome had to 
face the people of Lucania, Bruttii, Etruria, and Umbria, aided by 
Gallic mercenaries from northern Italy. A Roman force was utterly 
destroyed by these mercenaries at Arretium, but prompt vengeance 
partly slaughtered and partly drove off the Gauls, and in 283, again 
at the Vadimonian Lake, in Etruria, a decisive victory was gained 
which, with a second at Populonia in 282, gave Rome the mastery 
of northern Italy, a term which, we must remember, excludes the 
territory now Italian, then Cisalpine Gaul. 

The next contest comes in the south, and shows us one of the 
most chivalrous of ancient warriors, the brilliant royal adventurer 
and something more, known as Pyrrhus, already seen by us in 
Sicilian warfare. A Roman war-fleet on its way to the coast of 
Umbria, in the Adriatic, anchored in the harbour of Tarentum. It 
seems that its presence in those waters was a violation of an old 
treaty forbidding Roman ships of war to pass the Lacinian pro- 
montory, on the south-west end of the Gulf of Tarentum. The 
vessels were attacked by the mob of the city, and five were taken, 
and the crews either killed or sold as slaves. The Romans sent an 
embassy demanding redress, the chief of the envoys being a citizen 
of one of the noblest houses of Rome, a man who had been thrice 
consul. At the audience in the Tarentine theatre, the Roman 
envoy's mispronounced Greek aroused the laughter of the people. 
His remonstrances raised a cry of " barbarian ! " and at last he was 



Rome: Mythical Period to Punic Wars (? 753-264 B.C.) 137 

hissed off the stage like a bad actor. As the stately Roman retired, 
a drunken buffoon came up and bespattered the senatorial gown with 
filth. Postumius the envoy turned round to the multitude, and held 
up the gown, as if appealing to the universal law of nations. This 
action only increased the insolence of the Tarentines. They clapped 
their hands, and set up a shout of laughter which shook the theatre. 
"Men of Tarentum," cried the Roman, "it will take not a little 
blood to wash this gown." This gross outrage had been inflicted 
on the last people in the world who were likely to submit to it. A 
Roman army marched into the Tarentine territory, and the Tarentines 
appealed for help to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who availed himself 
of this opportunity of carrying out his ambitious plan of conquering 
a new empire in the west for himself and the Hellenic nation. In 
280 B.C. he landed in Italy with 25,000 men and 20 elephants, 
creatures then for the first time seen there. An easy victory for the 
Greeks was anticipated. The fame of Alexander was still fresh. 
The Romans were regarded as mere barbarians, and that their forces 
should win a pitched battle against Greek valour guided by Greek 
science seemed as incredible as it would now appear that Soudanese 
or Ashantis should, in the open plain, put to flight an equal number 
of the best British troops. Pyrrhus, however, when his practised 
eye had surveyed the Roman encampment, cried, "These bar- 
barians have nothing barbarous in their military arrangements." He 
was at first victorious, for his own abilities were superior to those of 
the generals opposed to him, and the Romans were baffled and 
somewhat daunted by the onset of the elephants. At Heraclea, in 
Lucania, after a fierce and long doubtful struggle, the Epirot king, 
with great loss to himself, won the day. In the following year, 
279 B.C., at Asculum, in Apulia, he was again victor in a two-days' 
struggle, but paid so dearly for it that he spoke of his success as 
" ruinous." Pyrrhus then went to Sicily for two years, and after his 
return he again met the Romans, in 275 B.C., at Beneventum, in 
Samnium. The Roman commander was the famous consul Curius 
Dentatus, who now won a complete victory, capturing some elephants 
and many hundreds of prisoners. The Epirot king returned 
to his own country, and the war ended in 266 B.C. with the subjuga- 
tion of Lower Italy. The state had now become the most powerful 
and compact that then existed in the world. The political wisdom 
of Rome was shown in her permitting the conquered peoples of 
Italy to retain their own laws, dialects, and administrations, while 
they looked up to her as their leader and centre of life and strength. 



138 A History of the World 

A great increase of wealth came in the possession of large tracts of 
land, with forests, mines, and harbours from which a great public 
revenue accrued. The three political classes were the Roman 
citizens in the full sense, the governing body, who lived in the city 
or the adjacent territory divided into the tribes (parishes or wards), 
and in the Roman colonies established in different parts of Italy ; 
the inhabitants of municipal towns, having the citizenship without 
the suffrage or the right of holding public offices ; and the allies or 
federated cities, existing in various degrees of subjection as regulated 
by special treaties, bound to furnish auxiliary troops or ships of war, 
but not to serve in the legions. 



Chapter II. — From the Beginning of the Punic Wars to 
the Conquest of Carthage and Greece (264-146 b.c.). 

We are now to have Rome in conflict with the great commercial 
and naval power already seen in these pages. The contest was to 
decide the mastery of the world as it then was, and it was fought 
out with determination, skill, and valour on both sides such as have 
rarely indeed been displayed in the history of the world. The 
Aryans were fairly pitted against the Semitic race, with results largely 
affecting the future of the world. Dealing only with the main events, 
and neglecting the petty occasion which brought into collision two 
powers sure to fight in the end, we find the Romans capturing 
Agrigentum, in Sicily, in 262, after defeating a Carthaginian force 
that advanced to its relief. A powerful fleet was absolutely needful 
to protect the coast of Italy, and the Romans, with their usual 
energy, created one that included vessels of five banks of oars. 
They also devised means of boarding by bridges let fall on the 
enemy's decks, bringing a close conflict in which they were 'Certain 
to win. 

After the loss of one squadron, the consul Duilius gained, in 
260, Rome's first naval victory at Mylae, west of Messana, and 
another and greater naval defeat befell the Carthaginians in 256 at 
Ecnomus, on the south coast of Sicily. The Romans then invaded 
the Carthaginian territory in Africa, and were unsuccessful, also 
suffering great disasters to their fleets from storms. In Sicily the 
war, conducted for the Carthaginians at the end of the struggle by 
the great Hamilcar, surnamed Barca or Lightning, the father of 
Hannibal, was evenly balanced. Peace, which was nothing but a 
truce between antagonists of such character and resources, came in 



Rome (264-146 B.C.) 139 

24 t B.C., after the Roman commander Lutatius Catulus had utterly 
defeated the Punic fleet off the yEgates islands on the west coast of 
Sicily. Sicily thus became the first Roman province, saving the 
territory of Rome's faithful ally in the war, king Hiero of Syracuse. 

During the cessation of warfare with Rome, the great African 
state was brought near to ruin by a general revolt of her mercenary 
troops. The war lasted for three years, and Rome basely took 
advantage of her rival's trouble to deprive her of the islands of 
Corsica and Sardinia. About this time the Romans were engaged 
in serious warfare with the Gauls of the north, who invaded Etruria 
in great force, and marched on Rome. After three years' hard 
fighting (225-222) Cisalpine Gaul was fairly conquered, and the 
colonial fortresses of Placentia, Cremona, and Mutina were founded. 
The republic had by this time, in war with the piratical Illyrians, 
acquired the command of the Adriatic Sea, and of parts of its 
eastern coast. The famous Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca 
was entrusted by his countrymen with the task of preparing revenge 
for the wrongs received from Rome. He saw that new territory and 
military resources were needful, and with the eye of genius he 
marked Spain as the scene for the creation of a fresh Carthaginian 
empire. In a series of ably conducted campaigns (237-229), ended 
by his death in action, he conquered that country in all the south 
and west, leaving the command to his son-in-law Hasdrubal. The 
murder of this man by a Spanish slave in 221 brought to the 
front one of the greatest men in the world's history, the immortal 
Hannibal, a hero of the highest rank as a general, a statesman and 
diplomatist of rare gifts, a man known to us only from his foes, and 
yet one whose pure and noble image no wrath and envy of those 
whom he so often crushed in battle has been able to mar. 

Assuming the Spanish command in his 26th year (221 B.C.), 
this son of Hamilcar, sworn to undying hostility to Rome, soon 
provoked the second Punic war by the capture and destruction of 
Saguntum, about the middle of the east coast of Spain, a city in 
alliance with the great Italian republic. That power's declaration 
of war (218 B.C.) was quickly followed, on Hannibal's part, by one 
of the most daring military enterprises on record. In 218 he started 
for Italy, relying upon substantial aid from the lately conquered 
Cisalpine Gauls and the Italian cities, in case he should have initial 
success over the Romans on their own territory. Crossing the 
Pyrenees with an army of 50,000 foot and 9,000 horse, he made 
his way through the south of Gaul, fighting the natives as he 



140 A History of the World 

advanced, crossing the rapid Rhone, and then, with immense diffi- 
culties from the rough weather, the warlike tribes, and roadless, 
rugged ground, he traversed the Alps by the Little St. Bernard, and 
descended into Italy, after a five-months' march, with but 20,000 
infantry and 6,000 horse remaining. The consular forces were driven 
off in a cavalry-battle at the Ticinus (Tirino), a northern affluent of 
the Padus (Po\ and that river was crossed by the invader. In 
December, at the Trebbia, a southern tributary of the Padus, the 
Romans suffered a severe defeat, and the Cisalpine Gauls joined 
Hannibal with many thousands of good troops. The invader then 
crossed the Apennines (217 B.C.) into Etruria, and almost destroyed 
a large Roman army, with the loss of their leader, the consul 
Flaminius, and 30,000 men, at the battle of the Trasimene Lake, 
between Cortona and Perusia. By this time terror reigned in Rome, 
and the cautious and able Fabius Maximus (proverbial in the phrase 
" Fabian policy " used of delay) was appointed " Dictator." The 
conquering Carthaginian then crossed the Apennines into Picenum, 
rested his army, and established communications with his African 
base of operations by way of the Adriatic Sea. The Roman govern- 
ment, unwisely weary of Fabius' strategical method in following and 
watching Hannibal, changed the commanders in 216, and placed 
the new consuls, /Emilius Paulus, a veteran general, and Terentius 
Varro, a very incompetent leader, at the head of an army of nearly 
90,000 men, double the numbers of Hannibal's force. The issue 
came in the greatest defeat that ever befell the Roman arms. At 
Cannae, in Apulia, the great strategist and tactician almost annihilated 
his foemen. About 70,000 Romans fell, including Paulus the 
consul, and over 80 men of senatorial rank ; and so many knights 
(equites) lay upon the field that a peck of their gold rings, signs of 
their rank, was sent as spoil of war to Carthage. The victor lost 
only 6,000 men. Capua, the Lucanians, the Samnites, and many 
towns of Lower Italy, joined the Carthaginian cause, and the position 
of Rome seemed to be desperate. We may say at once, since it is 
impossible to give many details, that for 14 years longer the 
Carthaginian leader maintained himself in the country, marching 
hither and thither, capturing and then again losing towns, never 
beaten in any great action, ravaging the land for the support of his 
men, but never able to subdue steadfast Rome. The Latin cities 
remained generally faithful to her ; new armies were raised, and 
Marcellus, Fabius, and other generals showed prudence and skill. 
On the other hand, Hannibal received little support from home, 



R ,c.) 141 

1 

tion that distin • 1 » t- i r 

in dominion in S| 
winn under the command of th( At the 

C tunc, tl "ii w.i! 

d and flowed. In 1 1 1 
k i 1 1 o < 1 in 
I In the foll( I 

ns, who took -i terribl 

the 
[1 
t the t >r« •• 

1 .uxl takii 

I : 

in Ii rmish. rhe Romai 

<>f up. 1. m n. 

■ 
I the cent] 

a turning point in the history <»f tlu- 

:;t wlil< h in ' IVlli 

ided in • 

I 

I 



142 A History of the World 

A sudden march northwards of Nero, with some thousands of picked 
men, so strengthened his colleague Livius, who was facing Hasdrubal, 
that a complete victory was won ; the Carthaginian leader was slain, 
and Hannibal knew his brother's fate, and the blighting of the last 
hope of success, only when the head of the conquered leader was 
flung into his camp. Scipio, in Spain, completed the expulsion 
of the Carthaginians by capturing Gades {Cadiz), and then returned 
to Rome, where his success was rewarded in 205 by election as one 
of the consuls. In the following year he carried the war into Africa, 
ravaged the land, defeated Carthaginian and Numidian armies, and 
compelled the recall of Hannibal. In 202 the great Carthaginian, 
with a much inferior force, was utterly defeated by Scipio at Zama, 
and the war ended in the following year. The terms of peace were 
hard for vanquished Carthage. Spain and all her Mediterranean 
islands were given up ; a yearly sum of 200 talents (about ^50,000) 
was to be paid for 50 years. All ships of war beyond ten were 
surrendered, the immediate consequence of this being that Scipio 
had 500 vessels towed out to sea and burnt. No war could be 
undertaken without the permission of Rome. Scipio, the conqueror 
of the greatest general of that, perhaps of any age, was henceforth 
known by the surname of " Africanus," or " the man of Africa." 
The Italian supporters of Hannibal were punished by large 
losses of territory, and by deprivation of municipal freedom. 
Many Roman colonies were founded in Lower Italy to secure the 
country, and Upper Italy, after long warfare, was thoroughly subdued, 
and the Gallic population " Latinised " in language and manners. 
Spain became a Roman province after 205, but there was almost 
constant warfare for many years before the warlike tribes were 
thoroughly reduced. Hannibal, yet unsubdued in spirit, sought to 
raise his country from the depth to which she had fallen, and 
effected valuable reforms in the government ; but a Roman party 
caused his flight, in 195, to Antiochus of Syria, whom he roused 
against Rome without effect. Antiochus was utterly defeated in 
190 B.C., and Roman strength in the East began. We have already, 
in the history of Greece, dealt with the wars against Macedon, and 
the end of her supremacy in Greek affairs. Hannibal, driven from 
court to court by dread of Rome on the part of the sovereigns, 
ended his life by poison in 183, when he was staying with Prusias, 
king of Bithynia, and learnt that he was about to be betrayed into 
the hands of the inveterate foes on whom he had inflicted such 
terrible blows. The chief results to Rome of her success in the 



R 143 

it were predominance among all states on 

rtual in. 1 ., and t 
:rul of the great 1 
■ 

1 which th< 

left Jth an l 

:er the f 2oi, si it to 

1 imprudenl 

from the I 
1 > ("the 1 

1 

in the ■: 

the irm 

n in the 
the with the well -known w 

r. that I i out." 

I villain M N midia. 

It Koine were little heeded. I 

• armed their n< 

. 

1 their 

ther rv>t less than ten miles from 

ruin tin. 

1 

tin in. All ■ 
- 

1 
1 ,00 

. in 
'• 
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144 A History of the World 

enemy's fleet. The delay in the operations caused the dispatch 
to Africa of one of the new consuls, Publius Scipio, a son of 
/Emilius Paulus, the victor of Pydna in the third Macedonian war, 
and adopted into the family of the Scipios by the elder son of 
Hannibal's conqueror at Zama. The new commander, chosen to 
his high office, through the insistence of the citizens at the Comitid 
Tributa, before the legal age (he was only 37 instead of 43), proved 
himself worthy of his family connections. New vigour was thrown 
into the siege. A quarter of the city called the Megara was stormed, 
and then the Carthaginian army outside the walls, fancying that 
the city was taken, abandoned its camp and retired into Byrsa, 
the Upper City. The Punic commander, a Hasdrubal of no note 
except as a traitor and coward who surrendered, himself before the 
end to save his own life, then put to death with tortures on the 
wall the whole of the Roman prisoners in his hands. The place 
was now almost closely invested, as Scipio, burning the outside 
abandoned camp, occupied the neck, of the peninsula, and blocked 
up the harbour by a huge wall, built across. The Carthaginians 
then dug a new channel out to the open sea, and, to the amazement 
of the Romans, sailed forth with 50 new ships of war. The great 
city seemed to be doomed to capture ; for the ships which might, 
by a prompt attack, have destroyed the almost defenceless Roman 
fleet, and so enabled the place to be re-victualled, returned to 
harbour after a vain and joyous demonstration. An attack on the 
harbour-side of the city, in which the Roman battering-rams were 
used on the walls with much effect, was foiled through a daring 
sortie which drove off the foe and burned the works and engines. 
Scipio, in the winter of 147, when the siege had continued over 
two years, cut off the food-supplies by an attack on outside allies 
of Carthage, and the population were soon in a starving condition, 
the garrison alone being fed by Hasdrubal from the public stores. 
Early in 146 the war-harbour was taken by the Romans, who made 
their way into the neighbouring market-place, and then the Upper 
City was attacked by an advance along the three streets of six- 
storied houses leading thither. Incessant and desperate resistance 
could not prevent the storming of house after house, and the 
buildings, by Scipio's order, were fired, with the destruction of 
numbers of old people and children who had hidden themselves. 
For six days and nights, with relief-parties, the Romans fought on, 
and then terms of surrender were sought and granted. The wife 
of Hasdrubal slew her two children in sight of Scipio and his 



R • . .' i.e.) 

nd flung th< !• i the 

■ >ll with her i m n 
M ami women w< 
ten times that numtx i ol and soli .t in 

the splendid i 1 hus 

l 
It was t ; . hit ii 

■iu- tall <>t t lorinth. < art, 
ition lasting 17 days, was razed to tin- ground. 

on the - 

and 
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• the 
the 
■ 

ived the titl 
a distim 
'i.i. 
\\ 

Minor. This territory hail lac:. 
thru •iti<» hus of S pon the - 

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■ repuhli< <>f the western world. 
• 1 
■ »rth having in tin- basin <>f the 

in : 
1 

and ihi Minor. 

■ 

i 
1 



146 A History of the World 

(ager publicus) both in Italy and the provinces ; by the amounts 
derived from customs-duty on imports and exports, from mines 
and salt-works ; and from a five per cent, duty on the numerous 
enfranchised slaves. We are now to trace the process of decline 
in the republic — the political and social deterioration which, from 
the corruption and frailty of human nature, ever waits on those who, 
raised to a position of great material prosperity, are not under strong 
restraints of morality and religion. 

Chapter III. — The Decline and Fall of the Republic. 
(146-27 B.C.) 

During the ages of conquest a great change had been passing over 
the olden simplicity and virtue of Roman public men. The homely 
country-life was abandoned for a race for honours and wealth in 
the capital. Luxury of living, introduced from the East, and the 
taste for art acquired from Greece, caused eagerness for wealth, 
and the attainment of public honours, the high offices of the state, 
was the surest road to its acquirement in provincial governorships 
where the plunder of tax-gatherers was shared, bribes were received 
for judicial decisions in cases between wealthy provincials, and rich 
gifts came from kings and states yet unsubdued. The Senate at 
this time wielded supreme power, and every rising citizen sought 
admission to the body. The way thither, as has been shown, lay 
through the holding of one or more of the five chief offices, and 
as the election to these offices rested with the body of citizens 
assembled in the Comitia Tributa, a gigantic system of bribery was 
developed, not in the way of payments man by man, but in the 
securing of the masses, tribe by tribe, through the expensive shows 
of the cruel public games, where men fought with strange strong 
wild beasts from abroad, and were pitted against each other in the 
famous fights of pairs of gladiators, well-fed, well-trained athletes, 
whose business it was to fight and in many cases to die "to make 
a Roman holiday." Crime begat crime in this career of Roman 
politicians. The successful candidate for senatorial rank was loaded 
with debt to the rich trading order of Rome, the knights — the tax- 
farmers and usurers of the day — through borrowing money for the 
vast expenditure needful to his election to office. When he quitted 
Rome for his provincial career as proconsul or propraetor, his 
only hope of repaying his creditors lay in what he could make out 
of those he governed. It was understood that, out of three years 



Rome: Decline and Fall of the Republic (146-27 B.C.) 147 

of provincial governorship, the gains of the first year would pay the 
debts at Rome ; the second would obtain plunder enough to bribe 
up to an acquittal at the trial for extortion which might follow gross 
tyranny ; and the third year lay up a fortune large enough to enable 
the possessor to adorn his mansion with choice works of art, to live 
"in Oriental luxury, with his villa on the Campanian coast and his 
great retinue of freedmen and slaves. 

Greed for wealth, party-rivalry, and desire for personal dis- 
tinction, had replaced the old Roman virtue of self-sacrifice to the 
common good, unswerving loyalty to the state ; and domestic 
purity of life decayed with the introduction of foreign manners 
and licentious foreign forms of faith. The social system had been 
greatly changed through the disappearance, to a large extent, of the 
middle class which, in all free states, is the backbone of national 
welfare. The soil of Italy had been enriched by the blood of 
countless thousands of her sons slain in the dreadful warfare with 
Hannibal. The bones of many thousands more lay in foreign 
lands won by Roman swords. In exchange for these, Italy had 
received millions of slaves, the spoil of war, and the population 
and politics of the capital were debased by the admixture of large 
numbers of these men who received enfranchisement and became 
citizens. Both at Rome and in Italy at large, the old race was 
corrupted by intermarriages with these aliens from all parts of the 
Roman world. A wealthy oligarchy, and a degraded mob, living 
in idleness on free corn supplied by the state and by rich men 
seeking popular favour for political ends, represented the old 
Patricians and Plebeians, the latter of whom had been mainly small 
proprietors of land or traders, the middle class needful to give 
stability to a constitutional system. In another direction, the 
horizon was dark through the growing discontent of the Italian 
allies and the Latins, treated rather as subjects, as conquered 
foreigners, than as kinsmen who were worthy of, and were aspiring 
to, the full Roman citizenship. The land-question was the one 
which showed the most alarming condition of affairs. The ruin 
of the small farmers in the Hannibalian war had sent men to live 
in the towns rather than in the country-districts, and the wealthy 
men of Rome had bought up the soil, so that the great number 
of small freeholders had been replaced by a few proprietors of vast 
estates. Great areas of fertile corn-lands had been turned into 
pasture, and such tillage as remained was in the hands of chained 
gangs of slaves. Worse than all, the Roman nobles had lost the 



148 A History of the World 

old regard for law and order. Armed violence took the place of 
constitutional methods. Tiberius Gracchus, a citizen of the noble 
Cornelian family, a grandson of the victor of Zama, became a 
tribune in 134 B.C., and sought to remedy existing evils by a 
measure for dividing the public lands, wrongfully held by nobles 
without paying rent, into small freeholds. In the following year 
he was murdered in the Forum, with some hundreds of his sup- 
porters, by the hands of the nobles themselves and their following 
of slaves and bravos. Ten years later his brother Caius Gracchus, 
also as tribune, aimed at still more extensive reforms, and met 
with the same fate. Henceforth the internal history of the re- 
public has much to do with civil war between aristocratic and 
popular leaders. The former sought to maintain the existing con- 
dition of affairs, so profitable for the oligarchy and the degraded 
mass of the people in Rome ; the latter aimed at reforms which 
would break down the power of the oligarchs, chiefly by admitting 
all the Italians to the full franchise conferring political power. 
Taking a momentary glance at foreign affairs, we find that southern 
Gaul (beyond the Alps) became a province as Gallia Narbonensis, 
with Aquas Sextise, the modern Aix, as a colony. The new 
territory was commonly called Provincia, or " the Province," and 
is represented by the modern Provence. The Balearic Isles were 
annexed, and after a war of five years' duration with an able and 
wicked usurper of the throne, the greatest state in Africa, Numidia, 
was added to the Roman territories (106 B.C.). 

Near the end of the 2nd century b.c. the Romans were, for the 
first time, and in a way formidable even for them, brought face to 
face with a body of the Teutonic (Germanic) peoples who were to 
form so large an element in the population of modern Europe. In 
113 the people of the extreme north-east of Italy were alarmed by 
the appearance of hordes of tall strong warriors, blue-eyed, some 
with thick long fair hair, some with shaggy red locks. On their 
helmets were the heads of horned oxen, bears, or wolves, while 
others had the spread wings of eagles fastened to their iron caps. 
These were Cimbri, originally from the territory now called Jutland, 
and perhaps of Celtic race, and Teutons, German tribes from the 
Baltic coast. They had migrated into Helvetia (Switzerlatid), and 
dwelt there until the natural increase of their numbers forced them 
to seek food elsewhere. They were desperate, as men are in front 
of starvation, and their bodily strength made them terrible foes. 
The number of fighting men is said to have reached 300,000, and 



R " Dcclii • the Republi 

the 1 children t<>..k. part in the migrai I 

rn Alpine 
h the i! their 

inula h. 

■>f low birth, 
i Afi 
I 

. in that line i >ond 

bold, n: 

the r.ink and file. In 1 ; • .1 for the 

man hed into the i . and 

aim in a tr< n battle near \ 

Ic slew th( 
d "f tin 

I the vill 

the ii i< ti 

ival, at w 
burnt on the hill uts of "\ 

1 
M, when the 

the 

•it of the 

•i«l the \ 



150 A History of the World 

having consuls, prsetors, and a Senate, and a capital at Corfinium 
in the country of the Samnites, the chief of the rebel peoples, who 
were aided by the Marsians and others in central Italy, and by the 
Lucanians and Apulians in the south. The two-years' contest, in 
which 300,000 Italians are asserted, on good authority, to have 
fallen, was of a desperate character. Rome was saved from destruc- 
tion by the fidelity of the Latin allies, by the military skill of Marius, 
and especially of the noble named Sulla, a pupil of the old plebeian 
soldier in the conduct of war, and by the artful policy of conceding 
the franchise, during the struggle, to such Italians as had not yet 
revolted, and then to all who should lay down their arms within 
two months. In 89 B.C. Asculum, in Picenum, was taken by the 
state-troops and utterly destroyed, and finally tne Lex Julia gave 
the Roman franchise throughout the country to all citizens of towns 
in alliance with Rome up to the borders of Cisalpine Gaul. The 
devastation of the land almost equalled that Avhich had occurred 
during the war with Hannibal, and intensified the evil, above 
described, of the extirpation of small freeholders. 

The next phase of Roman history takes us to the East, where 
the very able and energetic Mithradates, king of Pontus, in the 
north-east of Asia Minor, reigning from 120 to 63 B.C., had founded 
a powerful realm, extending north-eastwards to beyond the Caucasus, 
and over the east of Asia Minor. In 92 he had been -checked by 
Sulla, as proconsul in Cilicia, in his aggressions on Roman de- 
pendents in Asia Minor, but in 88 Mithradates broke out again, 
defeated several Roman generals, and caused the massacre of many 
thousands of Roman subjects in the cities. His forces also invaded 
Greece, and excited the people to rebel against Rome. Sulla took 
the field in 87, landing in Epirus, capturing Athens, and defeating 
the Pontic armies in 86 and 85. He then entered Asia by way of 
Thrace and the Hellespont, and brought Mithradates to terms, 
which included the restoration of all his conquests, and the payment 
of a great war-indemnity. In order to complete this subject, we 
shall for the time leave aside affairs in Italy, and keep with the 
obstinate Eastern monarch. In 74, along with his son-in-law 
Tigranes, king of Armenia, he again attacked Roman power in the 
East, occupying the kingdom of Bithynia which the sovereign 
Nicomedes, another son-in-law of Mithradates, had bequeathed to 
the republic. The war was conducted for Rome with great ability 
and energy, at the outset, by Lucullus, one of the consuls, who 
drove the king of Pontus from his territory and then occupied 



Ron D line and Fall of the Republic (146 27 b.c.) i 5 1 

attic In 

the ; 

from further 

Mithradal 

I 

nl r)ut t<» Asia in 
unlii 

Main 

nidi 

with the land 

ich as those < atia. 

In 1 f civil * 

:i tending to thi 

Disputed 

and l>y 

had < ome, under the 

. in the milil had 

• 

v chiefly raised l>\ recruit- 
mob, th ians, 
drawn from 
l 
• in the 

rd abundant pi Ins men, 

nothing either in 
m t that 

■ 

■ ■ 
1 



152 A History of the World 

a mere tyrant. In 82 Sulla, who had returned from the East with 
40,000 men, and had been joined by Pompeius, then a young leader 
of the nobles, with an army of volunteers, defeated the Marian party 
and their Italian supporters in several battles, entered Rome, and 
then took a terrible revenge upon the cities and towns which had 
supported the democratic cause. A regular proscription deprived 
some thousands of knights, and many senators, of life and property, 
and the soldiers of Sulla had a rich booty. We need not be troubled 
about the so-called "reforms" of Sulla. Made "perpetual Dictator," 
he greatly increased the power of the Senate, and reduced that of the 
tribunes ; but these changes had no permanent effect, as the old free 
state was already dead, and things were swiftly moving towards the 
possession of absolute power by a single person. Sulla's death in 
78, after his abdication in the previous year, was followed by more 
civil war between " Marians " and " Sullans," and then Rome had 
to face another peril in the war with Spartacus the gladiator. 

In the previous century (135-132) there had been a serious 
servile war in Sicily, where the revolted slaves defeated several 
armies. In 103-99 a hard struggle was needed to suppress a like 
insurrection in the same island. The danger now arose far nearer 
to the capital. Spartacus, a Capuan gladiator of real ability in war, 
headed a formidable revolt of comrades and slaves, and took up a 
position on Mount Vesuvius. Four armies, under praetors and 
consuls, were defeated by him, and several large towns were taken 
and plundered. The leader at last fell bravely fighting, and 
Pompeius, who had just returned from warfare in Spain, crushed 
the remnant of the rebels. In 70 b.c. Pompeius became consul, 
and was henceforth a leading politician, at first taking the popular 
side and repealing some of Sulla's legislation. He rendered great 
services to the whole commercial world of the Mediterranean by 
his skilful, systematic suppression, a virtual annihilation, of the 
pirates who infested the waters of that sea. The evil had risen 
to such a height that in 67 he was appointed, with supreme powers, 
to this important task. The sea-robbers had established a kind of 
free state afloat, a regular, organised community, with headquarters 
among the mountains of Crete and Cilicia. They swept the sea 
from end to end, and no merchant or his property was safe. They 
landed on the coasts and plundered towns and rich villas, carrying 
off the wealthy for ransom, and at last reached the point of dragging 
to captivity, from a high-road near Rome, a praetor journeying with 
all the retinue of his high office. The needful work was quickly 



Roi I line and Fall of the Republic (i-r 

and t h« »r ■ I he terra of Ins s;> i ial 

lintment w il in thre 

ns had been font 
had been m 
oo piratical craft had been taken, 10,000 ml)! 
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I 54 A History of the World 

flight of the leader from Rome, the arrest and execution (by the 
order of the Senate and contrary to the law which allowed an appeal 
to the Comitia Tributa) of two chief conspirators, and the death of 
Catiline in Etruria, fighting like a demon with his followers against 
the other consul and his troops. In 70 ii.c. Cicero won undying 
renown by his impeachment of the infamous Verres, proconsul of 
Sicily, driving that villain into exile by his mere indictment, the 
opening speech which gave the chief heads of the atrocious mis- 
government of that fertile province. In 51-50 Cicero gained 
well-earned credit by his own just and kindly treatment of the 
provincials when he was governor of Cilicia. 

The well-known supreme and varied talents of Caius Julius 
Caesar, a noble of the highest rank who, for his own ends, took up 
the popular cause against the senatorial party, dispense with the 
need for elaborate eulogy of a man who was at once a general and 
a statesman of the highest order ; an admirable orator and writer ; 
a man of fashion ; the darling of Roman ladies ; cool-headed, 
generous, kindly to all Romans, — a very marvel in his union of gifts 
and attainments, and in his fitness for the work which he accom- 
plished, that of bringing the whole Roman world under subjection 
to one imperial ruler. He made instruments for his work out of the 
circumstances and the politicians of his time, using them with the 
utmost patience and the keenest intelligence as he moved onwards 
to his foreseen and predestined goal. Such was the man who, 
in 60 B.C., took a great step forward in his career by forming, with 
Pompey and Crassus, the secret alliance known as " The First 
Triumvirate." In the following year Caesar was consul, and in 58 he 
went as proconsul to Gaul for the term of five years. Pompey took 
Spain as his province. Crassus, as we know, went to Syria and met 
his death in Parthia. Of Caesar's eight campaigns in Gaul, and his 
two visits to the British Isles, it is needless to write in detail. He 
displayed in the conquest of the Gallic country from end to end, 
from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, the highest qualities of a general, 
and he established Roman civilisation among the Celts of the 
central region, strongly resembling their kinsmen, the Irish, in 
character. Rome thus acquired a new nation of firmly attached 
subjects, who supplied her with many great men. For his own 
purposes, Caesar created there the magnificent army of veteran 
troops, thoroughly devoted to their great leader, with which he was 
to master the whole Roman world that had just received so noble 
an addition of territory. 



Rome : Decline and Fall of the Republic (146-27 b.c.) 155 

Pompey and the senatorial party, in jealous dread of Caesar, 
caused the breaking-out of civil war in 49 B.C., and the conqueror of 
Gaul, crossing the famous and proverbial Rubicon, a little stream 
running into the Adriatic a little north of Ariminum, and there form- 
ing the boundary of his province, invaded Italy, swept through the 
country in 60 days, and drove Pompey and his party over to Greece. 
The terror in Rome was soon allayed by Caesar's mild and magnani- 
mous conduct towards his opponents, in striking contrast to the 
atrocities of the contest between Sulla and Marius. Turning first 
to Spain, in order to secure his rear. Caesar, in the summer of 49, 
broke up the forces there under the command of Pompeius' legatl 
or lieutenant-generals, took Massilia (Marseilles) on his return, and 
then, in the spring of 48, followed Pompey to northern Greece, 
landing on the coast of Epirus. At Dyrrhachium he suffered a 
defeat by Pompey's breaking through his lines, and retired to 
Thessaly There, in August, came the decisive battle of Pharsalus 
or Pharsalia, where Pompey, with double Caesar's force (about 22,000 
men), was utterly defeated. He fled to Egypt, and. was there 
barbarously murdered by the king's minister, who hoped thereby 
to win Caesar's favour. The conqueror shed tears on seeing the 
victim's head, and displayed his noble clemency towards countrymen 
by taking no life of those whom conquest had placed at his disposal. 
The ''Alexandrine war," as it was called, of 48-47 was due 
to a general insurrection of the people, aided by the Roman army 
of occupation, against Caesar and his limited force. He was in the 
greatest danger, besieged in the royal palace, but escaped by aid 
of his own reckless courage. Making a diversion by causing the 
Egyptian fleet to be fired, an act which, to the regret of an accom- 
plished scholar well skilled in Greek learning, caused the destruction 
of much of the famous library of Alexandria, he swam over a branch 
of the Nile to a place of safety, and was finally victorious, in the 
spring of 47, by means of troops that arrived from Asia. It was 
at this time that the famous Cleopatra, then 16 years of age, 
became Queen of Egypt. The country was under Roman control, 
with a garrison in Alexandria. 

After returning to Rome, Caesar crossed to Africa, and in 47-46 
warred with the adherents of Pompeius, including his son Sextus, 
Cato, and Labienus, Caesar's former able second-in-command or 
legatus. The battle of Thapsus, in 46, ended that struggle in 
complete victory for Caesar. Cato slew himself at Utica, rather than 
surrender. Sextus Pompeius and Labienus escaped to Spain. The 



156 A History of the World 

conqueror then returned to Rome and celebrated triumphs for his 
successes, and gave splendid games to amuse the people, with a 
lavish distribution of corn and money. It was at this time that, 
with the aid of Greek astronomers, he corrected the calendar, 
which was nearly ten weeks " out," and established the " Julian 
Calendar," making the solar year consist of 3655 days. Caesar's 
work of pacification was not yet done. In 45 he was in Spain, 
taking the field against Pompey's sons, who were finally, after 
some success, defeated in the desperate battle of Munda, between 
Cordova and Gibraltar. Labienus, Cneius Pompeius, and 30,000 
men had fallen, and at last the great Julius could return to Rome, 
master of the whole Roman world. As " Dictator " for life, by 
decree of the Senate, he was really invested with absolute power, 
under the constitutional form of a democratic monarchy, whereby 
all laws were still required to be submitted to the easily controlled 
Comitia. The Senate became a council of mere advisers, increased 
in number up to 900, by admission of Spaniards, Gauls, ex-officers, 
and even sons of freedmen, all appointed by the supreme ruler. The 
financial system was reformed by the abolition of tax-farming and 
the imposition of direct taxes. Numerous colonies were established 
for the purpose of spreading the Latin tongue and civilisation in 
the provinces, and of clearing .Rome of idle inhabitants. Many 
other schemes for the public benefit — as the codification of the 
Roman law, the establishment of public libraries, the draining of 
the Pomptine (or Pontine) marshes on the coast of Latium, the 
embanking of the Tiber to check the destructive inundations, and 
the improvement of the harbour at Ostia (the mouth of the river) — 
had been devised by the all-embracing mind of Caesar, when his 
career was cut short by one of the vilest and most senseless crimes 
in history. The aristocratic conspiracy against him included Brutus, 
Cassius, and many other men whose lives he had spared, and who 
had received other benefits at his hands. On March 15th, 44 B.C., 
at the age of 56, Julius Caesar died, stabbed in 23 places by the 
hands of those whom he had subdued and forgiven, in a hall of 
the great theatre of Pompeius, where the meeting of the Senate 
happened to be held on that fatal day. The populace of Rome, 
incited, in his famous funeral-oration, by Marcus Antonius, who 
had served under Caesar in Gaul, and commanded the left wing 
of the victorious army at Pharsalia, rose against the conspirators, 
and drove them from the capital. 

Thirteen years of disturbance and civil war followed the crime 



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158 A History of the World 

30 B.C., pursued by Octavianus to Egypt, they both committed 
suicide, she by the poison of a snake called asp — probably the 
" horned viper " — he by the sword. Egypt became a Roman 
province, and this completed Rome's dominion over all the 
Mediterranean countries. Peace had come after so many troubles. 
Octavianus, heading a vast military force devoted to his service, 
and hailed with the highest satisfaction by provincials weary of 
oppressive governors, by the populace of Rome, and by all citizens 
who desired rest after so long a period of storm and stress, was abso- 
lute master of the territories henceforth forming the " Roman Empire." 
In 27 B.C., the Senate having been reduced to 600 members, with 
a high property-qualification, he accepted the title of " Augustus " 
(the " Majestic") and was fully installed in his imperial office. 

Chapter IV. — Imperial Rome to Fall of Western Empire. 
(27 b.c.-a.d. 476.) 

The imperial system established by Augustus retained the old 
republican offices and forms, but concentrated the titles and powers 
of most of them in one person. He was commander-in-chief of 
all the military and naval forces of the state as Imperator, meaning, 
"the holder of a military command" from the people, and giving 
rise to the tide of Emperor. In the provinces he held proconsular 
power, but the control of these was divided between himself and 
the Senate. The more quiet provinces, needing but a small military 
force to maintain order, such as Africa, Asia (Minor), Achaia, Sicily, 
Sardinia, Hispania Bsetica (southern Spain), and others, were 
senatorial ; and those which needed the presence of regular armies, 
such as the four Gallic provinces, northern Spain, Syria, Mcesia (the 
modern Servia and Bulgaria), and Egypt, were imperial, governed 
by legati (lieutenant-generals or deputy-rulers) in the name of the 
supreme ruler. He was princeps Senatus (chief man of the Senate), 
always speaking first on every question, the title giving rise to the 
word prince. As censor he controlled all appointments to the 
Senate ; he also had the trilnoiitia potesfas, or privileges and 
functions of the tribunes ; the potestas consularis, or consular 
authority ; and the supreme pontificate, or headship of the state- 
religion. The imperial rule was thus the government of an autocrat 
under the forms of an aristocracy, a system in which the names of 
the ancient free state threw a transparent veil over an actual 
despotism. The Equestrian Order, or knights, the great rival of 



Rome : To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 1 59 

the Senate under the republic, became now a nursery for the superior 
body, and the consuls were simply the agents of the emperor in the 
Senate for the transaction of public business. The title was still 
held in high respect by the people, and the emperors used to confer 
it on their favourites as the greatest distinction they could bestow. 
At last consuls came to be made out of freedmen, professors, and 
rhetoricians. There was at first little outward show of sovereignty 
assumed by the real ruler of the state, and a careful avoidance of 
the assumption of " kingship," a thing hateful to all Romans. The 
extent of Roman sway is to be seen in the boundaries by modern 
names. These were, on the north, the English Channel, the Rhine, 
the Danube, and the Black Sea ; on the south, the great African 
desert {Sahara) ; on the west, the Atlantic Ocean ; on the east, the 
Arabian Desert, the Armenian Mountains, and the Tigris. A great 
military force — 16 legions — was maintained on the Rhine and 
Danube frontiers, and eight legions on the eastern borders. The 
capital and the monarch were secured by the presence of 20,000 
picked men — the City Cohorts and the Praetorian Guards ; the 
commerce of the Mediterranean was protected by two permanent 
fleets, with headquarters at Ravenna on the Adriatic, and at Mise- 
num in the Bay of Naples. The population of the whole dominion 
may have been 100,000,000, one-half consisting of slaves. The 
"Augustan Age" of literature is proverbial, as including, within wide 
limits, the Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, Catullus, and other authors 
in prose and verse whose names are familiar to British schoolboys. 
The great poet Lucretius was a little before this period ; the comic 
poets Plautus and Terence flourished in the 2nd century B.C. ; 
the great satirist Juvenal and the famous historian Tacitus were 
about a century later than the time of Augustus. The Maecenas 
whose name is proverbial as the enlightened and liberal patron of 
literary men was a friend of Augustus, and shared with Agrippa — an 
active and able commander in the civil wars, who led the victorious 
fleet at Actium — the confidential management of public affairs. We 
may note that in 4 B.C., probably, really occurred the greatest event 
of the world's spiritual history, the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem 
of Judea. The erroneous chronology has been, for the sake of 
convenience, allowed to stand. 

In a.d. 4 Augustus adopted as his successor Tiberius, the son 
of his wife Livia by her first husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero. 
One of the chief results of the imperial system was the deliverance 
of the provincials, to a great extent, from the oppression exercised 



160 A History of the World 

under the later Republic, when the Roman nobles were in power. 
By degrees, the provinces received the Roman citizenship, and were 
placed on a political equality with the dwellers in Italy, sharing the 
benefits of protection from the Roman law. A striking instance of 
this is seen in the fear of the " chief captain " of the troops at 
Jerusalem, with regard to Saint Paul, "after he knew that he was a 
Roman, and because he had bound him." The Apostle was a 
" free-born " citizen of Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, made a "free 
city " by Antony for her support of the cause of Julius Caesar, and 
we see Paul justly asserting his rights, in the most dignified way, 
when, after he and his colleague Silas had been " beaten openly 
uncondemned, being Romans," and cast into prison, at Philippi 
in Macedonia, he compels the magistrates, who " feared, when they 
heard that they were Romans," to come in person and escort them 
out of durance, instead of their simply departing at the magistrates' 
order of release. Such was the majesty which belonged to the 
simple " Roman citizen." 

We must now give a brief account of the Teutonic tribes of 
Europe, before dealing with the most important secular event of 
the time of Augustus. The great region called Germany comprises 
central Europe, the slope from the Alps northwards to the German 
Ocean and the Baltic Sea, bounded eastwards by the Vistula and 
the Carpathians, westwards by the Rhine. The Roman provinces 
Roetia (the canton Grisons in Switzerland, and most of the Tyrol), 
Vindelicia (north-east of Switzerland, south-east of Baden, south of 
Wiirtemberg and Bavaria, and north of Tyrol), Noricum (most of 
Styria and Carinthia, and a part of Austria proper, Bavaria, and 
Salzburg), and Pannonia (east of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, 
south-west of Hungary, Slavonia, and part of Croatia and Bosnia) 
included a portion of what is now called Germany. The Roman 
Germania Superior and Inferior (Upper and Lower Germany) were 
Gallic provinces on the left (western) bank of the Rhine. Germany 
proper, which was never a province of the empire, was called by 
the Romans Germania Magna (Greater Germany). Upper Germany 
means the hilly country, in early times covered with vast forests of 
oak, pine, and birch, out of which the mountain-ranges rose like 
islands from a sea. Lower Germany is the northern level, having 
much heathery waste and marshland in the days with which we 
are dealing. There were many tribes of the old Germans : the 
Chatti (Hesse), the Angles (Schleswig), the Saxons (Holstein), the 
Suevi (Swabians), including then the Marcomanni (" Marchmen," in 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 161 

Bohemia), and the Longobardi, on the middle Elbe; the Batavi 
and Frisii {Holland), and others. We need not enter into particulars 
of the pantheistic nature-worship which formed the religion of 
these peoples, with its " all-father " Woden or Odin, its storm-god 
(Thor) ; deities of war, love, justice, and the earth, worshipped 
by invocations and by sacrifices which included the slaughter of 
prisoners of war. The special days set apart for devotions to 
certain deities are retained in our names of days of the week, and 
many modern customs come from the old German festivities. The 
faith of the Scandinavians or northern Teutons (Norway and 
Sweden) was one of great complication, quite beyond our scope 
here. The social system included nobles, with no political privi- 
leges ; freemen, meaning landowners, a warrior class, with tillage 
performed by serfs ; freedmen, renters of land bound to military 
service ; and bondmen, partly serfs bound to the soil, partly actual 
slaves. The majority of the population was composed of the last 
two classes. 

The close connection in race between the bulk of the inhabitants 
of Great Britain and a portion of these ancient Germans gives a 
peculiar interest to the character and history of the old Teutons. 
They were marked by regard for personal and political freedom for 
men of their own race, by respect for women, probity, and purity 
of life — the qualities which, heightened by Christianity, are illustrated 
in the age of chivalry and romance. We see that it was of the 
utmost importance to the future welfare of the world that such peoples 
should not be conquered by Rome, but enjoy the freedom which 
could alone secure the full development of national character and 
institutions, when we consider over how large a portion of the earth 
the influence of the German element is now extended — the whole of 
western, central, and north-western Europe, all of North America, 
much of Africa and India, all Australasia. This great result was 
obtained when our own ancestor Herman (called by the Romans 
"Arminius") gained, in a.d. 9, his famous victory over Varus. 
The Romans had already been in conflict with Germans, since the 
defeat of the Teutons by Marius. During his Gallic campaigns, 
Julius Caesar had inflicted a severe defeat on Ariovistus, a German 
chief who invaded Gaul. In 12-9 b.c. Drusus, a younger brother 
of Tiberius, made four campaigns against the Frisii, the Cherusci, and 
other tribes, leading Roman armies to the Weser and the Ems, but 
making no permanent conquest. In 8-7 B.C. Tiberius was also in 
the field against Germanic tribes and had some success. Arminius, 



1 62 A History of the World 

chief of the powerful Cherusci, living on both sides of the Weser, 
was a man who had served in the Roman armies and held the 
Roman citizenship as a knight. He bravely resolved, when many of 
his countrymen, including his brother, had made full submission to 
the Romans, to defy the power which had crushed Hannibal and 
Mithradates, and the gallant Gaul Vercingetorix, who had been led 
captive in Csesar's triumph and then slaughtered with deliberate 
cruelty in a Roman dungeon. Again referring to Creasy's pages 
for a full account, we may state that the indignation of Arminius 
and patriotic Germans had been strongly aroused by the licentious 
conduct of Quintilius Varus, the Roman governor, and his officers. 
His headquarters were near the centre of the modern Westphalia, 
and Arminius, having secretly incited a general revolt of the tribes 
near the Weser and the Ems, caused his emissaries to represent the 
danger to Varus, and urge him to take the field in full force. The 
Roman commander, a very incompetent man, was thus seduced with 
three legions into the hilly district, with deep, narrow valleys and vast 
woods, called still the Teutoburger-wald, or Teutoburg forest. When 
the Roman forces were entangled, with a great baggage-train, in 
this difficult country, then sodden with rain, they were attacked on 
all sides with showers of missiles, and forced to make their fortified 
camp for the night on the first open spot that was reached. In the 
morning the march was renewed, and Arminius again assailed the 
enemy in a woody hilly region where he had blocked the road with 
barricades of hewn trees. Confusion followed in the Roman ranks ; 
hundreds of men fell under showers of javelins ; the Roman cavalry- 
commander rode off with his men; Varus was severely wounded; the 
column was pierced through, and scarcely a man escaped from the 
scene of slaughter. This great success, the complete - liberation, as 
it proved, of Germany, was followed by the cutting-off of the Roman 
garrisons in every quarter. In following years, Tiberius and other 
Roman commanders made attempts to avenge this disaster, but no 
permanent success was attained, and a decisive verdict on the result 
of all the Roman efforts to subdue Germany has been given by the 
historian Tacitus, when he styles Arminius "Liberator hand dub ie 
Germaniae," " the man who beyond doubt freed Germany," and 
declares, with reference to certain Roman successes, that the 
Germans were " triumphati potius quam victi" " rather triumphed 
over [in the technical sense] than conquered." 

Tiberius, coming to power in a.d. 14, at 55 years of age, had much 
previous experience in state-affairs both civil and military. His 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 B.C.— a. d. 476) 163 

character during his 23 years' period of rule has been drawn with 
consummate art, and probably with exaggeration due to the irritation 
of a recent hatred, by the historian Tacitus, as that of a gloomy, 
suspicious tyrant, whose just and moderate rule for the first eight 
years of his reign is ascribed to sustained hypocrisy. The imperial 
show of power was further developed by the reduction of the 
Com/'/ia, or popular assembly, to a mere shadow. The Senate, now 
a cowardly and servile body, was the highest tribunal for the state- 
crimes of its own members, under charges of majestas, or high 
treason, which grew in frequency as the reign proceeded. The 
most trivial offences were dealt with under the laws of treason, 
and gangs of men sprang into existence as a terror to the most 
innocent subjects whose popularity and wealth provoked attack. 
Shameless and pitiless accusatores, or " denouncers,"' hounded by 
impeachments to their ruin the victims of their malice or their 
greed, and the mean and cowardly delator, or informer, muttered 
his insinuations of treason against better men than himself into the 
ear of a jealous emperor, or, like the mouchard of the modern 
French empires, vilest of all the agents of despotism, provoked 
and contrived the plots which he was paid to reveal. At the same 
time, a people of freed slaves, a mixture of races from every clime 
in the vast empire, were ready to serve any imperial master that 
was lavish in feeding them at home by distributions of gratuitous 
corn, and in amusing them at the circus by displays of gratuitous 
cruelty. We may note that the victims of the laws of treason 
were either banished to some barren rocky island in the Medi- 
terranean, or were forced to self-destruction upon the system which, 
until the salutary revolution in Japan, existed with the ruler 
and the nobles of that country; the "happy dispatch" at Rome 
being designed to relieve the emperor from the odium of ordering a 
citizen's execution. For eight years (23-31) the infamous Sejanus, 
commander of the Praetorian Guards, was the favourite of Tiberius 
and the minister of tyranny. It was he who laid the foundation of 
the future power of the Praetorians, the "Janissaries" of Rome, by 
uniting their cohorts in one camp near the capital. 

For the last ten years of his reign Tiberius dwelt in seclusion 
at the isle of Capreae {Capri), off the coast of Campania, indulging 
in secret debaucheries, and finally lapsing into an almost insane 
condition. In a.d. 31 Sejanus himself, an ambitious, bold, and 
able man who incurred his master's suspicion, was struck down 
through an imperial letter to the Senate which consigned him to 



164 A History of the World 

immediate execution and handed his body over to the outrages of 
the Roman mob. Macro, the successor of the fallen man, was a 
worse Sejanus, having all his vices without any of his ability. 
Fallen into a lethargic condition, Tiberius was suffocated by Macro 
in a.d. 37. Among the criminal tragedies of the reign may be noted 
the poisoning of the popular hero Germanicus, the nephew and 
adopted son of Tiberius. He had fought with success against the 
Germans, twice defeating the famous Arminius, and in one of his 
campaigns his troops gathered up the bones of the soldiers who 
perished with Varus, and paid the last honours to their memory. 
Recalled by his jealous master, he was sent to the East, where he 
died through the act of Piso, governor of Syria, whom Tiberius felt 
obliged to sacrifice to the public indignation. Germanicus was the 
father of the emperor Caligula and of Agrippina, the mother of 
Nero. 

It is impossible to pursue here in detail the careers of the 
Roman emperors, and we shall note only a few important persons 
and events. Of the 62 emperors from Julius Caesar to Constantine, 
42 were murdered, 3 committed suicide, 2 abdicated, and only n 
died a natural death, each " Caesar " having an average reign of little 
over 5 years. A part of the history is made up of civil wars 
between rival claimants for the imperial authority, another part 
deals with revolts of provincial governors and of the Praetorian 
Guards and other divisions of the military force, who raised to 
imperial power whomsoever they chose to impose upon the Senate. 
The mad Caligula (37-41) was murdered by some of his servants. 
The feeble old Claudius (41-54), younger brother of Germanicus, 
and husband of the infamous, proverbial Messalina, began the 
conquest of Britain, to be hereafter related, and visited the island. 
He was very good to the Gauls and gave the Roman citizenship to 
many of them. Mauritania and other African provinces were added 
to the empire, with Lycia, Thracia, and Judea, hitherto a dependent 
kingdom for many years. Poisoned by his second wife Agrippina, 
Claudius was succeeded by the monster Nero (54-68), who 
murdered his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, and his step- 
brother Britannicus, and degraded his office by appearing in public 
as a chariot-driver at the games, an actor, and a singer. The 
Christians were brutally persecuted on a false charge of causing the 
great fire at Rome which lasted for six days and laid much of the 
city in ruins. The capital was splendidly rebuilt, with a vast 
imperial palace, the domus aurea (" Golden Mansion "), covering all 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 165 

the Palatine Hill and adjacent grounds. A general. revolt caused 
Nero, abandoned by all, to kill himself at the age of 30. With him 
ended all the male members, by birth or adoption, of the house of- 
Julius Caesar, and Galba, an old general of the "army in Spain, the 
dandy Otho, and the glutton Vitellius, were all raised to power and 
murdered within two years (68, 69). The Flavian emperors, so 
called from the first of the line, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, though 
only his two successors were of his family, were in power for over a 
century, and included the best men who ever ruled the empire. 
Vespasian (69-79), raised to the imperial power with universal 
approval, after a civil war, was a Sabine of the fine old stock, a brave, 
skilful soldier, simple in life, strict and moderate in rule. We have 
seen him in Judea, and he played his part in the conquest of 
southern Britain. Two months after the close of his reign the 
great eruption of Vesuvius buried the towns of Pompeii and 
Herculaneum. His son and successor, the excellent Titus, the 
captor of Jerusalem, reigned but two years (79-81), completing the 
Colosseum, the gigantic remains of which are still the wonder of 
visitors in Rome. His brother Uomitian (81-96), a cruel, cowardly 
tyrant, under whom the infamous informers were active, and the 
Christians, Jews, and philosophers were atrociously persecuted, was 
murdered by one of his freedmen. 

Five good rulers then followed each other through adoption as 
sons of the predecessors. The kindly Nerva, an old senator, 
reigned but 16 months, but in that time he repealed the law of 
treason and recalled the exiles. A bright period came with Trajan 
(98-117), a Spaniard by birth, the first ruler not of Roman, or even 
Italian, race. He is reckoned the greatest of the emperors for the- 
combination of mental, physical, and moral qualities. The great 
province of Dacia [Routnania, eastern Hungary, and Transylvania) 
was added to the empire by successful war against king Decebalus, 
to whom Domitian had paid tribute to refrain from attacks. From 
the numerous colonists then settled there, the modern Roumanians 
derive their language. It is probable that during this period, and 
under Trajan's three successors, the people of the Roman Empire 
had the happiest life of all the history of Rome. The emperor 
and his wife lived a simple quiet life, walking about unguarded in 
the streets of the capital. The Senate were treated with due 
respect, and the people were pleased by kindly treatment and by 
the adornment of Rome with splendid buildings. The magistrates 
enjoyed much of their former authority under the Republic, and 



164 A History of the World 

immediate execution and handed his body over to the outrages of 
the Roman mob. Macro, the successor of the fallen man, was a 
worse Sejanus, having all his vices without any of his ability. 
Fallen into a lethargic condition, Tiberius was suffocated by Macro 
in a.d. 37. Among the criminal tragedies of the reign may be noted 
the poisoning of the popular hero Germanicus, the nephew and 
adopted son of Tiberius. He had fought with success against the 
Germans, twice defeating the famous Arminius, and in one of his 
campaigns his troops gathered up the bones of the soldiers who 
perished with Varus, and paid the last honours to their memory. 
Recalled by his jealous master, he was sent to the East, where he 
died through the act of Piso, governor of Syria, whom Tiberius felt 
obliged to sacrifice to the public indignation. Germanicus was the 
father of the emperor Caligula and of Agrippina, the mother of 
Nero. 

It is impossible to pursue here in detail the careers of the 
Roman emperors, and we shall note only a few important persons 
and events. Of the 62 emperors from Julius Caesar to Constantine, 
42 were murdered, 3 committed suicide, 2 abdicated, and only n 
died a natural death, each " Caesar " having an average reign of little 
over 5 years. A part of the history is made up of civil wars 
between rival claimants for the imperial authority, another part 
deals with revolts of provincial governors and of the Praetorian 
Guards and other divisions of the military force, who raised to 
imperial power whomsoever they chose to impose upon the Senate. 
The mad Caligula (37-41) was murdered by some of his servants. 
The feeble old Claudius (41-54), younger brother of Germanicus, 
and husband of the infamous, proverbial Messalina, began the 
conquest of Britain, to be hereafter related, and visited the island. 
He was very good to the Gauls and gave the Roman citizenship to 
many of them. Mauritania and other African provinces were added 
to the empire, with Lycia, Thracia, and Judea, hitherto a dependent 
kingdom for many years. Poisoned by his second wife Agrippina, 
Claudius was succeeded by the monster Nero (54-68), who 
murdered his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, and his step- 
brother Britannicus, and degraded his office by appearing in public 
as a chariot-driver at the games, an actor, and a singer. The 
Christians were brutally persecuted on a false charge of causing the 
great fire at Rome which lasted for six days and laid much of the 
city in ruins. The capital was splendidly rebuilt, with a vast 
imperial palace, the domus aurea (" Golden Mansion "), covering all 



Rome: To Fa tern Empii 

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1 66 A History of the World 

liberal support was given to every useful institution in Rome or in 
the provinces. The Parthian warfare of this excellent emperor has 
been already given. 

Hadrian (i 17-138) was a lover of peace and a good administrator, 
an active man who seems to have been the first emperor who under- 
stood his real position as master of most of the civilised world. 
The vast expense of maintaining frontier-garrisons caused him to give 
up Trajan's conquests beyond the Euphrates, and he then made 
journeys to every part of the empire, in order to maintain good 
government of the provincials and strict discipline among the 
troops. Even the distant Britain was visited, and the imperial 
journeys ranged from the borders of Caledonia (Scotland) to the 
cataracts of the Nile. Much was done to develop the Roman juris- 
prudence in drawing up a code of laws based on the decisions and 
rules of the judges, and published by the emperor for public use. 
Hadrian thus rendered service not only to his own generation but 
to the people of Europe in ages then far distant. Great architectural 
works of public use and adornment arose under Hadrian — harbours, 
aqueducts, new buildings at Athens, and a splendid mansion at 
Tibur (Two/i) near Rome, with many still extant art-treasures. 

Antoninus (138-161), surnamed Pius, or " the Affectionate," from 
his devoted regard for his adoptive father, Hadrian, was a true 
father of his people, and his reign may be considered as the happiest 
period of the Roman Empire. The frontiers were well defended 
against the attacks of barbarians, and the world of Roman sway 
was free from the crimes, conspiracies, civil wars, and bloodshed 
which had so troubled and disgraced it under some previous rulers. 
Wise, just, kindly, courteous, an enjoyer of all innocent pleasures, 
this most admirable and lovable of imperial masters encouraged 
literature, extended commerce, repaired roads and bridges, improved 
the laws, and stayed the persecution of the Christians. His successor 
Marcus Aurelius (161-180), trained in his youth by sages of the 
Stoic school, and styled " the Philosopher," had already, as adopted 
son, taken a part in government with Antoninus. He was a man 
of the purest virtue, the noblest production of Stoicism, one of the 
finest moral characters in all history. He erred at times from 
the unsuspecting goodness of his heart, but his excellent intentions 
can no more be doubted than those of our own immortal Alfred, 
with whom he may be well compared. The reign of Aurelius, 
however, was one of great troubles for which he was in no way 
answerable. The warfare with Parthia has been already noticed, 




THE ROMAN EMPI 



L 




' 






Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 167 

as also the dreadful pestilence, the real Oriental plague, which over- 
spread the whole western world, slaying many millions of people, 
and was followed by famine. The first symptoms of the great 
northern migration of tribes appeared, and the emperor had to 
take the field against the Marcomanni, Alani, Sarmatse, and other 
races on the north-eastern and north-central frontiers. The energy 
and discipline of the Roman armies had become relaxed, and the 
fearful losses in the ranks due to the plague were supplied by the 
enlistment of vast numbers of slaves and gladiators. The German 
tribes were, on the whole, successfully dealt with in warfare which 
continued for most of the reign. The emperor was also harassed 
by the ill-conduct of his wife Faustina and the bad promise of 
his son Commodus. He had never been strong in health, and 
he died on a campaign against the Germans, worn out by constant 
anxiety and fatigue. This illustrious champion of the best heathen 
philosophy and faith displayed in his life a spirit of gentleness, 
magnanimity, humility, and forgiveness such as only the best 
Christians have attained, and his famous Meditations, invested with 
a melancholy charm of rare potency in their revelation of a soul 
saddened but not embittered by its loneliness amid the troubles 
of life, are the legacy to the world of this serene and elevated spirit, 
ever philanthropic, ever a student of his beloved philosophy even 
amid the storms of war. His death was lamented throughout the 
Roman world as a vast calamity, and he received almost divine 
honours in countless families, where his image, more than a century 
later, was found treasured among the household gods. Aurelius' 
two persecutions of Christianity, in 166 and 177, involving the 
martyrdom of Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle St. John, at Smyrna, 
were the work of a man who, clinging earnestly to his stoical 
faith, had been brought, through misrepresentations, to regard the 
new religion as an immoral superstition and as a political conspiracy. 
He believed that, in striving to extirpate the creed of which he 
might have been one of the noblest converts, he was doing his 
duty as a ruler in preserving society from revolution. We need 
hardly remark that Aurelius, like all the cultivated men of his 
day, had no belief in the old pagan mythology, which the witty 
Lucian, a Greek author of the time, born in Syria about a.d. 125, 
of Semitic race, treats with the most graceful and amusing ridicule. 
The old beliefs were, in fact, fast declining, and a great political 
and social, as well as mental, change was in progress when the 
German tribes, urged by the Slavonic peoples of the north-east, 



1 68 A History of the World 

furnished many peaceful settlers within the Roman boundaries 
and recruits to the Roman armies. The empire was not merely 
depopulated, to a large extent, by the great plague and by other 
like visitations in the next century, but it was being repopulated 
by Teutonic aliens. We have here the real cause of the " downfall 
of the Roman Empire." 

With the reigns of the " five good emperors " the best days of 
the great Roman dominion passed away.- The military power 
was becoming supreme, and withal the provinces could no longer 
be governed, but merely defended against barbarian encroachments. 
Commodus (180-192), son and successor of Aurelius, was simply 
a monster of cruelty and licentiousness. Murdered by his servants, 
he was followed, on the appointment of the troops, by a man who 
was murdered by the Praetorians within three months, and then 
Septimius Severus (193-2 n) carries us into the dreary 3rd century, 
marked by the worst of calamities in the shape of tyrannies, plagues, 
and the mischiefs wrought by a mutinous, omnipotent, and half- 
barbaric soldiery. Severus, a good commander, fought with success 
in the East, and died at Eboracum ( York) on a visit to Britain 
for the strengthening of the frontier against the Scots. Under his 
rule the Praetorian Guards, hitherto always natives of Italy, were 
increased in number to 50,000, picked men from all the frontier- 
armies, and thus the capital of the empire was in the hands of troops 
of foreign birth. Caracalla (211-217) was a cruel tyrant, whose reign 
was made notable by the granting of the Roman citizenship to 
all the provincials who were free-born. The object in view was 
to obtain more money for keeping the soldiers in good humour, 
through the higher taxation imposed on citizens. The political 
effect was of great importance. All free persons governed by 
Rome now became " Romans," and the unity thus obtained gave a 
new sense to the designation " Roman Empire." Caracalla was 
murdered, as usual, and we pass over the debauched Elagabalus 
(218-222), also murdered, to Alexander Severus (222-235), an 
excellent ruler, under whom the famous jurist Ulpian, a native 
of Tyre, nourished. He was one of the emperor's ministers, and 
commander of the Praetorian Guard, who slew him during a 
mutinous outbreak. Emperor after emperor followed, short-reigned 
in all cases. Under Decius (249-251) the powerful Teutonic 
people called Goths, whom we shall see hereafter, invaded Thrace, 
and were repelled. 

Under Valerian (253-260) there was much warfare with the 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 169 

northern barbarians, with the Franks in Gaul, with the Alemanni 
as invaders of northern Italy, with the Goths on the Danube and 
in Greece and Asia Minor. The emperor was defeated and taken 
prisoner by Sapor, king of a revived Persia to be seen hereafter. 
A period of confusion followed, with Gothic invasions, and warfare 
between pretenders to power, until a.d. 270, when a brief better 
period came with the emperor Aurelian (270-275), an lllyrian by 
birth. His predecessor Claudius (268-270), also a native of Illyria, 
and a brave soldier, had routed and driven back the Goths and 
Alemanni, and Aurelian showed both strength and wisdom in his 
dealings with the problem of foreign invasion. His brief reign 
was crowded with memorable achievements. The province of Dacia 
was surrendered to the Goths, and the Danube was in that quarter 
made the boundary of the empire. The Alemanni and Marcomanni 
were repulsed from Italy in a second battle of the Metaurus. A 
strong empire under one ruler existed again by Aurelian's defeat 
of a rival claimant of power in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. In the 
East, he reconquered Egypt, and defeated and brought captive 
to Rome the beautiful, brave, high-spirited, virtuous, and accom- 
plished Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (" Tadmor in the Desert"), 
a rich and magnificent city of northern Syria, about midway between 
Damascus and the Euphrates. This famous lady, probably of Arab 
race, was wife of the Bedouin chief Odaenathus, who had been 
appointed by the emperor Gallienus, in a.d. 264, to the rule of 
the East, and allowed to set up a "kingdom of Palmyra." He 
drove the Persians out of Syria after their defeat of Valerian, 
and extended his sway over most of the adjacent territory, from 
Egypt to Asia Minor. Splendid remains of Palmyra, including the 
great mile-long colonnade, originally of 1,500 Corinthian pillars, and 
the temple of the Sun (or Baal), are still to be seen. Aurelian, after 
crushing this newly risen Oriental empire, ruled wisely and well by 
Zenobia after her husband's death in 271, exhibited his illustrious 
captive, decked with jewels, and weighed down with golden chains, 
in his " triumph " at Rome, and then permitted her to end her life, 
in peace and affluence, in the society of her two sons, on posses- 
sions which he bestowed near Tibur (Tivoli). 

The emperor Probus (276-282) also did good work in restoring 
Roman supremacy by repelling the Franks, Alemanni, Vandals, 
and Burgundians. He enlisted a large number of German mer- 
cenaries in the army, and in this way another step was taken 
towards the ultimate overrunning of the empire by northern tribes. 



170 A History of the World 

Before the end of the 3rd century, in fact, the Roman dominions 
had become largely " barbarised " in the persons of the Teutonic 
Goths and Vandals who had entered the military service, and were 
spread through the territory more than any other nationality. The 
capital became, as we shall see, a provincial town on the banks 
of the Tiber. The Senate had no political existence, and the 
emperor became a kind of Oriental despot, naming his own . 
successor, and living in pomp and luxury, exacting the utmost 
servility of demeanour from his courtiers, and creating the principle 
of sovereignty which was to prevail in Europe for many ages until 
the rise of constitutional checks on monarchical power. A vast 
army of military and civil officials was spread over the empire, 
with expense that caused ruinous taxation, another prelude to the 
ultimate dissolution due to barbarian encroachments and attacks. 

We are here, however, somewhat anticipating the great change 
of system which began with Diocletian, proclaimed emperor by 
the troops in 284. Prior to dealing with this matter, we must 
see how the great transforming spiritual force, the transcendent 
power of Christianity, had been exerting its influence on the Roman 
world. The peace established by Rome on the Mediterranean 
shores, around which all the olden civilisation was gathered, had 
greatly promoted commerce and free intercourse. The imperial 
sway of Rome had spread abroad the Greek culture, and was 
preserving for modern times, through multiplication of copies, 
the unrivalled Greek literature. The Greek philosophy so widely 
known after the time of Alexander the Great had long been 
preparing men of education to receive still nobler lessons, and 
among the masses, severely tried by the calamities already related, 
there was a readiness to turn for relief to a faith which promised 
redress of grievances in a future state. A religion suited to the 
needs of mankind had long been preached and taught by men 
who, owing to the Roman supremacy, had free access to divers 
regions from which missionaries must have been excluded under 
other conditions. The seed, sown quietly, had been growing in 
many quarters ; the leaven had been working in the vast pagan 
lump. The rulers of the empire found that in the east and west, 
and north and south, thousands of orderly societies had come 
into existence, professing the same principles, and having the same 
polity and discipline. Throughout the provinces, men whose 
thoughts were wholly bent upon this world and its affairs found 
themselves in the midst of others who were devoted to the service 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 B.C.— a.d. 476) 171 

of, bound to obey, another ruler than the emperor. The new 
people would in no way, by attendance at the pagan worship, 
or at the public games which recognised the old deities, give the 
least sanction to former beliefs. Family ties, the nearest and 
dearest relationships, were disregarded in comparison with sub- 
mission to the demands of the faith, and death was welcomed rather 
than denial. Bishops appeared as rivals, it was supposed, of 
imperial power, and hence came persecution from good men who 
thought that the new " superstition " was, in its essence, disloyal to 
the powers that be. Persecution only scattered the seeds more 
widely, made the organisation firmer, and gave the new religion 
martyr-heroes and a history. The closeness of alliance, the 
unity of doctrine, the clearness and boldness of its enunciation, 
which marked the votaries of the religion, made a great impression 
on thoughtful minds, and in less than three centuries from the death 
of its founder Christianity gained the official approval of the highest 
authority in the empire. 

Diocletian (284-305), a man who rose to supreme power by 
his own abilities, sought a way of escape from the perils which 
had menaced and overwhelmed former rulers, in a division of the 
imperial power, for administrative purposes, among four, persons. 
The frontiers would be made safer, and the emperor would be 
guarded against attacks of the troops. A co-emperor and two 
viceroys called " Caesars " shared the direction of affairs with 
himself. The empire was thus ruled from four centres : Gaul, 
Britain, and Spain from Trier (Treves) on the Moselle; Thrace, 
Egypt, and Asia, by Diocletian, from Nicomedia in Bithynia 
(Asia Minor) ; Italy and Africa, from Mediolanum (Milan) ; and 
Illyricum, Macedonia, and Greece, from Sirmium, the capital of 
Pannonia, the modern Mitrovitz, on the left bank of the Save. 
Rebellions and barbarian invasions were thus stayed, and the soldiers 
were kept at work building walls and castles, and forming fortified 
camps on all the dangerous frontiers. It is obvious that the new 
plan could only succeed while the four rulers were competent 
men and all worked together. Rome thus ceased to be the only 
capital of the empire. The emperors were never in residence 
there, and the differences between Rome and the provinces had 
passed away now that the imperial rulers had ceased to claim 
authority merely as being chief officials of the city of Rome and 
commanders of the armies. The last and the most severe 
and persistent persecution of Christianity began in 303 under 



172 A History of the World 

Diocletian, two years prior to his abdication, caused by the failure 
of his health after 21 years of toil in state-affairs. This trial of 
the faith continued for about seven years. A decree issued from 
Nicomedia ordered the churches to be levelled with the ground, 
and the sacred books to be given up, under pain of death, 
to the imperial officers, and publicly burnt. All property of the 
churches was confiscated, and all public assemblies for Christian 
worship were prohibited. The Christians of rank and distinction 
were degraded from their offices, and declared incapable of holding 
any post of authority or trust. The right of Roman citizenship 
was taken from all those of the plebeian order, so that they became 
liable to corporal punishment or torture. Slaves who were Christians 
could not claim or obtain freedom. The whole body of Christians 
became outlaws, without protection in case of wrong, but liable 
to civil actions, bound to bear all the burdens of the state, and 
amenable to all its penalties. Many died by beheading, burning 
alive, and drowning. Nearly all over the civilised world, Chris- 
tianity was assailed by the full force of the civil power, urged 
on by the united influence of the pagan priesthood and the 
philosophic party. All was in vain. The non-Christian lovers 
of freedom had their sympathies aroused, and patience under 
tribulation excited admiration which in countless instances ended 
in conversion to the faith. 

The retirement of Diocletian was followed by civil wars, and 
during this period Constantinus (Constantine the Great) came 
to the front. He was born in 274, son of one of the co-emperors, 
Constantius, who had discouraged the persecution of the Christians, 
and of Helena, a Christian lady. Distinguished as a soldier, and 
very popular with the troops, he first assumed rule at Eboracum 
( York) on his father's death in 306. He defeated Maxentius, 
chosen an emperor by the Praetorians, in a great battle near 
Rome in 312, and then entered the city, disbanded the Praetorians 
and destroyed their quarters. He was, in his religious creed and 
conduct, a strange compound of paganism and Christianity ; he 
was an able statesman who made an important change in the 
mode of government by dividing the civil and military authority, 
thus lessening the danger of revolt by lowering the power of the 
fegati, or provincial governors. In 313 he issued an edict at Milan, 
giving civil rights and toleration to Christians throughout the empire. 
The laws were well administered, the frontiers strengthened, and 
the barbarians chastised. Becoming sole ruler in 323, he fully 



Roi II tern Empire [73 

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174 A History of the World 

the territory now forming Moravia, Bohemia and Bavaria; the 
Burgundians, on the Neckar-and the Rhine ; the Alemanni, between 
the Main and the Alps, along the Rhine ; the Franks, on the Lower 
Rhine ; the Saxons between the Elbe and the Rhine ; the Lango- 
bards, on the Lower Elbe ; the East Goths, in what is now southern 
Russia; and the West Goths, in Dacia (eastern Hungary and 
Roumania). These Teutonic peoples, now massed in a smaller 
number of larger tribes than before, had grown in numbers and 
power, and were better trained both in war and in political arts 
through connection with Roman civilisation. We have seen that 
the provincial armies were largely German, and German officers 
had acquired high position in the imperial service. At this time 
movements among the dwellers on the great plain of northern Asia 
were taking place, and these caused the invasion of eastern Europe 
by a fierce Tartar people called the Huns, of dwarfish figure, great 
strength, and ugly beardless faces, made more hideous by tattooing. 
The Goths were the first to feel the pressure. This remarkable 
body of Germanic or Teutonic people had for three centuries, up to 
about a.d. 380, a history of mere barbarian slaughter and pillage. A 
century later, they became the most powerful nation in Europe, 
with a sovereign of their race ruling in Italy, on the throne of the 
Caesars, with remarkable wisdom and benefit to his subjects, while 
another Gothic ruler held sway in Spain and southern Gaul. 250 
years more pass away, and the Gothic kingdoms and nation have utterly 
disappeared. The meaning of their name is a matter of dispute ; 
it may be " the nobly born." Their language greatly resembled 
the oldest English. Early in the 3rd century, we find this people 
dividing into two great branches, the Visigoths or West Goths, and 
the Ostrogoths or East Goths, then referring to their positions 
east and west of the river Dniester. As things came to pass, 
the distinction remained appropriate through the conquest of the 
western countries, Gaul and Spain, by the Visigoths, and of Italy 
by the Ostrogoths. In person they were tall and strong, with 
fair complexions, blue eyes, and yellow hair, much resembling 
the modern Swedes. In character they were brave, generous, 
hardy, pure and loving in domestic life. Liable to cruelty in the 
first excitement of conquest, they were, notably after their conversion, 
just and humane towards those whom they subjugated. We have 
already seen them in conflict with Roman armies, and they had 
compelled a Roman emperor, Gallus, to pay them a large yearly 
tribute on condition of leaving Roman territory at peace. 



Roi II. tern Empire .». 476) 1 7 c 

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176 A History of the World 

Goths south of the Danube, and was defeated and slain in the great 
battle of Adrianople. The victors moved westwards to the Adriatic 
and the borders of Italy, thus occupying another large section of 
the Roman territory. His successor Theodosius (379-395), ruling 
the Eastern Empire only until 392, fought the Visigoths with some 
success, and accepted them as allies in Mcesia and Thrace. It was 
in the person of this emperor that the rising power of the Church 
was strikingly shown. A Spaniard by birth, the last emperor who 
ruled over the whole undivided empire, he had cruelly punished, 
by the execution or massacre of several thousand persons, an out- 
break at Thessalonica, in Macedonia. On his return some months 
later to his capital, Milan, Theodosius was met at the church-door 
by Ambrosius the bishop, and excluded from communion until he 
had confessed his crime and done public penance. A formal end 
of paganism was made by decrees which forbade the worship of the 
heathen gods, under severe penalties. 

On the death of this ruler the territory was permanently divided 
into the Eastern and Western Empires, the latter now in its last 
century of existence. The real ruler of the Western dominions was 
the brave and able general Stilicho, a Vandal by birth. He aided 
the eastern emperor against Alaric, leader of the West Goths, who 
had invaded and ravaged Greece, and in 402 he caused his retire- 
ment from Italy. A few years later he defeated bands of German 
invaders, and maintained the frontier until 408, when he was put to 
death by order of his jealous master the emperor Honorius. Be- 
tween 406 and 409, when there was no longer any competent 
military leader in that part of the Western Empire, bands of Vandals, 
Suevi, and other German tribes crossed the Rhine from the Danubian 
regions, fought fiercely, with great losses, against the Franks, and 
invaded Spain. At this time northern Gaul was gradually occupied 
by the Franks, and Alaric with his Visigoths entered Italy in great 
force, and in 410 captured and sacked Rome, just before his death 
in Lower Italy. One of his successors, in 419, after fighting for 
the emperor against German invaders, founded a Gothic kingdom 
in southern Gaul, with its capital at Tolosa (Toulouse). This was 
the first regular settlement of the Teutonic barbarians inside the 
empire, and the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse continued for 
nearly a centrry. In 429 Genseric, king of the Vandals, crossed 
from Spain into Africa (Numidia), and took and sacked Hippo 
Regius, after a long siege, during which the bishop, the famous 
St. Augustine, died. It was through the ferocity with which the 



Rome: To Fall of Western Empire (27 b.c.-a.d. 476) 177 

Vandals then destroyed and ravaged churches, cities, and tilled 
lands that they gained their proverbial name as types of destructive 
barbarism. The city of Carthage was taken nine years later, and 
it became the capital of the Vandal kingdom in north Africa, ably 
ruled for many years by Genseric, who founded a formidable naval 
force, and made his fleets a terror in the Mediterranean. It seems 
strange, but it is true, that this Vandal king was a bigoted Arian in 
his theology, and most cruelly persecuted the orthodox Christians 
in his dominions. A succession of insignificant emperors came in 
Italy, and in 455 the Vandal conqueror crossed over to Italy, and 
captured Rome, which his troops were plundering for many days. 
Much booty was carried off in the shape of metal statues from the 
temples and the Forum. 

We have now to deal again with the formidable Huns, and we 
come to another great crisis in the history of the world. In a.d. 450 
these savage Tartar invaders of Europe had been for many years 
under the rule of a great man named Attila, known to us only from 
the literature and legends of those whom his warlike prowess made 
to suffer. Austere in life, just on the judgment-seat, conspicuous 
among his warriors for strength, hardihood, and skill with weapons, 
deliberate in counsel, swift and resolute in action ; carefully and 
shrewdly observant of the passions, prejudices, creeds, and supersti- 
tions of the peoples whom he conquered and held in subjection ; 
and of great strategical and tactical ability in war, Attila the Hun 
was to prove himself the last great and dangerous foe, save one, of 
the Aryan peoples in Europe. The Tartar and the Teuton were 
brought face to face in a death-struggle, and the future of the world 
depended on the issue. The laws, the institutions, and the Christian 
faith established in the Roman Empire were at stake when Attila, 
with armed bands of Ostrogoths and other conquered Teutons 
among his hordes of Huns, moved from his territories in south- 
central Europe. The head of the Visigothic kingdom in southern 
Gaul at this time (a.d. 45 i) was the brave and able Theoderic, and he 
made alliance with Rome, after much warfare with the emperor, for 
their common defence against the enormous hosts, computed at 
over half a million of men, that were advancing to overwhelm the 
west and south of Europe. The Rhine was crossed by the invaders, 
and the king of the Burgundians, a German people settled on the 
upper Rhone and the Saone, was defeated. When the eastern 
territory had been overrun, Attila, with the main body, marched 
upon Orleans, to invade the Visigothic territory beyond the Loire. 



178 A History of the World 

Theoderic was aided by an army under the able general Aetius, com- 
posed of regular legionaries and large numbers of barbaric auxiliaries 
who dreaded and hated the Huns. The city of Orleans made a 
stout resistance, and on the approach of the united forces of 
Theoderic and Aetius, Attila retreated towards the Marne, called in 
his detached troops, and awaited the enemy on the " Catalaunian 
fields," the vast plains of Chalons-sur- Marne, as ground most suitable 
for the action of his formidable cavalry. A furious struggle, for the 
details of which the reader should consult the pages of Gibbon's 
immortal work, ended in the utter defeat of the Huns, with enormous 
loss, and the death of king Theoderic. This victory, the salvation 
of Europe from subjection to Tartar barbarism, was followed by 
Attila's retreat and invasion of Italy. His death in 453 broke up the 
Hunnish monarchy. 

The latest rulers of the Western Empire are not worthy of 
mention. The Western Empire quietly drifted out of political exist- 
ence in a.d. 476, when Odovaker (Odoacer), king of the Heruli, 
a German nation or tribe, ruled Italy, at the request of the 
Senate, as governor for the Eastern emperor. There was thus no 
catastrophe, no "downfall" of the empire in the usual sense. The 
dominion of Rome, apart from the Byzantine Empire, could not be 
conquered, because it had already been absorbed. The olden 
population had been replaced by a new set of peoples, mostly of 
German or Teutonic race, and so the grand fabric faded away. 
Most of the new people, already largely acquainted with the Roman 
language and civilisation, and in many cases converts to the Christian 
faith, were anxious to preserve existing political and religious 
institutions as those which would be most serviceable to themselves. 
Odoacer, ruling in the name of the Eastern emperor, was in a sense 
reuniting the East and West, Byzantium instead of Rome being the 
centre of the civil government. Among the chief consequences were 
the development of a Latin or Western, as opposed to Greek and 
Oriental forms of Christianity, and the emancipation of the Bishops 
of Rome, afterwards called " Popes," now left free to pursue the 
course which was to end in establishing so imposing a fabric of 
ecclesiastical and, for long ages, of temporal and political power. 
The German or Teutonic peoples who settled in Spain and Italy 
and Gaul adopted the Latin speech and Roman customs, and hence 
the modern languages of France and of the Spanish and Italian 
peninsulas are known as the Romance languages, having the speech 
of the old Romans as their basis. 



Section II. MEDIEVAL HISTORY, 

FROM END <>t WESTERN EMPIRE TO im DISCOVEI 
[ERICA A.D. )2). 



BOOK I. 

>.!/ /\ / /V 777Y< W OF WES TE RN ROMAN EMPIRE 
TREA VERDUN \ I 

I I. [tali rHE Papacy ;thi < m i ; • 

ro Engl \ni>. 

1 {rears ol the 

i much i: I tic first half "f the period 

but this is somewhat 
misnomer. The occupation of the western part ol I I iman 

• 

i of the . institutions, and 

, which tl in their 

.■l « ivilisation i the 

■ • 
itral Euro] fhe ( bristian h 

ml sulitn 

■ 

■ 

... 



180 A History of the World 

institutions, modern towns and municipal government ; the growth 
of commerce ; the beginnings of great native literatures in the chief 
European countries ; the development of the political freedom which 
was to culminate in the establishment of modern republics and con- 
stitutional monarchies, — these lead us on to the new world of 
geography and of mental and social life, due to the mariner's compass, 
the invention of printing, the great revival of classical learning, the 
rise of a middle class, the decay of blind faith and superstition, and 
the commencement of the reign of reason and free thought. 

We left Odovaker (Odoacer) ruling in Italy in 476. A remark- 
able man now came to the front in the Ostrogothic prince Theoderic, 
well trained in his youth for ten years at Constantinople. He 
became in 474, at 20 years of age, king of the Ostrogoths, whom he 
settled in the region which is now southern Austria. In 488 Zeno, 
the Eastern (Greek or Byzantine) emperor, commissioned Theoderic 
to deprive Odovaker of Italy, and to rule his own Ostrogoths there 
as representative or lieutenant of the Byzantine power. The task 
was welcomed as suiting the ambition of one who desired to be 
head of a compact and civilised state, and Theoderic led his people, 
with all their cattle and property, across the Julian Alps. In 
September, 489, the battle of Verona, with great loss to the invaders, 
was won over Odovaker, and by the close of 491 Theoderic was 
master of the whole of Italy. The Ostrogothic kingdom, fairly 
founded by 493, was well ruled for 33 years by the sovereign who 
earned the title of " the Great." He showed rare tolerance in 
protecting the Jews against Christian bigotry, and rare taste in his 
earnest endeavours to preserve works of ancient art in buildings 
and statues. Theoderic's three capitals, Rome, Ravenna, and 
Verona, and many smaller cities, were adorned with churches, 
theatres, palaces, and public baths constructed at the king's order 
with lavish expenditure. In the literature which he encouraged, 
Theoderic's reign was distinguished by the learning of his secretary- 
of-state Cassiodorus, and of the philosopher Boethius, author and 
statesman, the greatest name in literature for 100 years, the last 
Roman of any note who understood the language and studied the 
literature of Greece. He was specially acquainted with Greek 
philosophy, and his translations and commentaries were the medium 
through which the writings of Aristotle on logic became first known 
to the western world. During his imprisonment on a charge of 
treason, for which he suffered death about 524, Boethius wrote in 
pure style his famous work De Consolatione Philosophies ("On the 



Italy — the !' 

I iiort <>f I 'In!- 1 by 

r and Provid 

i 

i . 
ned by t\ ;-, which 

In 
I 
ration. In 5 jo ti. 
ried prisonei ( . : I arius, the 

• of the 
y by the larses, 1 

made an >untry being ruled 

• h of Ravenna, under the emperor al I 
i i on this account, 

. in feeling with 
ilation, and it 1-. al 
. the I » inubi in territory 1 nate 

nd in a life of un* cury. I 

to b "ly of n 

l their en< 1 

of the northern trib ially 

. were in the middle of the 5th century, 

tern 

In 

•n in 

rdy. 
I hold On ''-rural 

i, they hated Cai iolic 

yed lanns and 

■ ■ 
• I 

on I 



1 82 A History of the World 

capital of the empire, and the tradition that St. Peter preached 
there. In 449 Leo the Great, who had shown much prudence 
and courage during the Hunnish and Vandal invasions, maintained 
the claim of his see to supremacy in the Western Church, and, 
in his instructions to his legates at the Council of Ephesus, he 
rested it on Divine authority in the words : " Thou art Peter," etc. 
When the Western Empire came to an end in 476, the chief 
man in Italy was the Pope, who was regarded as the leader and 
defender of the people. At the end of the 5th century (in 498) 
the election of a pope, formerly shared by the laity, came to rest 
solely with the clergy. The waning of the Eastern emperor's power 
in Italy after the Lombard inroad increased the Papal influence, 
and Gregory I. (the Great) may be regarded as the real founder 
of the Papal power. He held the seat from 590 to 604, and, 
mainly exercising spiritual influence, was reverenced for his 
character and his energy in reforms. By him the Lombard con- 
querors were won over to the Catholic faith, as well as the Arian 
Visigoths of Spain, and, though his missionary Augustine was 
certainly not the founder of Christianity in the British Isles, as 
lately (in 1897) assumed with so much pride and pomp in the 
Isle of Thanet, 13 centuries after his arrival, yet Gregory justly 
acquired new fame from the work done in England. In the 7th 
century the Popes were harassed by the Eastern emperors, who, 
still claiming to be masters of Rome and holding, by the " exarch," 
territory in Italy, required elections to be submitted to their 
confirmation. 

The Papal power grew in the West, and in 664 the Church 
in England recognised the control of the See of Rome. In 
Germany, Irish missionaries, St. Columban and others, had been 
the first to preach Christianity, and from 677, for some years, 
the English Wilfrith (St. Wilfrid, bishop of York) made thousands 
of converts in Friesland (most of Holland and part of Prussia), 
being succeeded there by Willibrod, or Wilbrord, of Northumbrian 
origin, who became bishop of Utrecht, and worked with great 
zeal and success from about 690 to 739. All this later work 
was done under Papal sanction, and, under a commission from 
Gregory II. (715-731), Winfried, or Winfrith, a native of Crediton 
in Devonshire, and a Benedictine monk, won to Christianity much 
of central and southern Germany. Churches and convents were 
everywhere founded, and supplied with priests, monks, and nuns 
from England. This eminent man, known ecclesiastically as St. 



The Papacy — the Byzantine Empire 

• | made, in 

;» and pi 
tc in tli • x bishoprics. In 

still th< 
ie Metropolitan of < 
his high post, l 

I in I: with lu> ition of . by 

nd of armed heathens. Hi^ remains, firs! i Utrecht 

•i/., had their final restinf . the fan 

ne abbey <■( Fulda (in Hi N tu), of Ins foundation. 

■ 
il learning, can Bhow a copy of the Gospels 
in the p - handwriting, one leaf \y ie<l with 

; 1 the w 
ne emp< ror 1 'III the 

diet with the •• exai 

.n.l the ! . the imperial 

the Ian by the Church. 

n by the 
I northern and central Italy were finall) 

[-741) called in the 
of the I n, who twice defeal 

the terrii 
hi. 1. Rimini, 

:. 1 and 1' rr n. 'I ii:- 
the tern; indation 

of t l 
and •lmiinis: I jlrui tion <>f 

rd 01 I I 1:1 77 1, when Karl the 

• 

- 

I, but il 

iute. 1 1 



184 A History of the World 

(474-491), and Anastasius (491-518) kept the realm unimpaired by 
barbarian conquest, and the last ruler left his successor a great 
treasure in gold, and a fine well-disciplined army of 150,000 men, 
largely composed of Isaurians, the mountain populations of southern 
Asia Minor, in corps raised by Zeno, who was of Isaurian birth, and 
of Armenians and others from the eastern frontier. The native 
elements of the army were thus strong enough to hold in check the 
Hunnish and German auxiliaries. Zeno had much trouble with 
Ostrogoth invaders of the Balkan peninsula, and at last got rid of 
the main body, as we have seen, by inducing Theoderic to turn his 
attention to Italy. 

The greatest of the Eastern emperors was Justinian, nephew and 
heir of his predecessor, the rough uneducated soldier Justinius. He 
reigned from 527 to 565, and under him the empire reached its 
highest point of power and renown. This slave-born Illyrian, gifted 
with keen natural intelligence, was trained at Constantinople, and 
became accomplished in every department save that of military 
science, in which he, like Louis XIV., was lucky or skilful enough 
in choice to have himself served by the ablest generals of his time. 
When he had almost reached middle age, the steady, practical man 
caused the world to wonder at his marriage in 526 with the dancer 
Theodora, the star of the Byzantine comic stage. Whatever her 
character may have been before her great elevation — there is little 
doubt that she has been much maligned — this extraordinary woman, 
one of the loveliest of all time, showed herself, both in intellect and 
in high spirit, as well as in spotless conduct, worthy to share an 
imperial throne. The emperor, ever brooding over great schemes, 
which he carried out with unscrupulous energy, had in his wife the 
most able and trustworthy of advisers. She was most bountiful to 
the poor, especially to unhappy beings of her own sex, and often 
intervened in favour of the victims of oppression. On one occasion, 
when the emperor's spirit quailed, her courage was the saving of 
his throne. At the splendid circus at Constantinople, called the 
Hippodrome, the chariot-races gave rise to the factions known as 
the " Blues " and the " Greens." This rivalry, by a singular 
perversion, was carried outside the circus into both religious and 
political affairs. The " Green " faction would oppose the Catholic 
or orthodox believers, or the " Blues " take a side in a contest for 
the throne. All classes of society chose their colour in this party- 
warfare, which, on many occasions in Byzantine history, caused very 
serious riots and insurrections. One of the worst of these outbreaks 



The Byzantine Empire 185 

came in 532. The emperor ordered seven ringleaders from both 
sides to be executed, and a rescue of the last three at the scaffold 
brought on an insurrection in which both " Blues " and " Greens " 
united against the authorities with cries of Nika ("Conquer"), and 
demanded the removal of the finance-minister and of the city- 
prefect. Justinian lost his nerve, and promised to dismiss the 
officials. Then his imperial power became itself at stake. The 
only troops in Constantinople were 4,000 Imperial Guards, a few 
Germans, and some hundreds of armoured cavalry. Belisarius, the 
famous general, was in command, but the rioters made a fierce 
resistance. The Senate-house was fired ; the cathedral was burned ; 
most of the city fell into the hands of the insurgents, and on the 
sixth day of the outbreak they crowned Hypatius, nephew of the 
late emperor Anastasius. The Council sat at the palace, the only 
building now left to the emperor, and many of the ministers urged 
Justinian to flee by sea, and to reconquer the capital with troops 
collected in the provinces. Then the empress Theodora rose and 
declared that a king had better die than be a dethroned exile, and 
quoted the proverb " Empire is the best winding-sheet." The 
woman shamed the men into action, and a last attack was made by 
Belisarius. The Hippodrome was stormed at two portals, the rebels 
fell in thousands, and peace was quickly restored. In 548, at the 
age of 40, Theodora died, worn out by the anxieties and toils of her 
position. 

Justinian ranks high as a conquering sovereign, and under 
him the East and West were for a time again united. Warfare with 
Persia from 527 to 532 was indecisive, but a victory won by the 
young Thracian general Belisarius showed the military value of 
the courtier who was married to Antonina, the favourite lady of 
Theodora. He was soon provided with fresh work in Africa. The 
Vandal kingdom there had sunk into weakness through the 
physical and moral degeneration of the race. Belisarius landed 
at Tripoli, with an army of horse and foot, in 533, and two 
victories, with the capture of Carthage and the surrender of other 
fortresses, made an end of the Vandal power. Sicily was the 
next conquest. The warfare of Belisarius in Italy has been seen, 
with the overthrow of the Ostrogothic kingdom by Narses. These 
successes were followed by the conquest of most of the coast of 
southern Spain. The financial administration of Justinian was very 
oppressive, owing to the vast expenditure on warfare often use- 
less, and an evil result was - the lasting exhaustion of the provinces. 



1 88 A History of the World 

masses of archers and spearmen. They now invaded the territory 
lying north of the Balkans, and before a.d. 600 most of the 
Thracian and Illyrian provincials, the chief Latin-speaking body in 
the Eastern Empire, had perished. The open country was wasted, 
and the new enemy came even across the Danube, and made 
progress westwards to Bohemia and the Tyrol. An evil time of 
revolution and tyranny, of Persian invasion to the heart of Asia 
Minor, was ended some years after the accession of Heraclius 
(610-641). All the provinces were overrun by Persians, or Slavs, 
or Avars. The treasury was empty, and the army had been almost 
annihilated by defeats. In 614 the Persians stormed Jerusalem and 
slew many thousands of Christians, carrying off the much-revered 
relic regarded as the wood of the "true cross." A great feeling was 
aroused, and, after some years of trouble with the Avars to the 
north-west, Heraclius took the field in 622 against the Persians. 
Six campaigns recovered all their .conquests, drove a great host 
of Avars and Slavs from the walls of Constantinople, forced the 
restoration of the " true cross," and enabled Heraclius to celebrate 
a true old Roman triumph in his capital. We leave him there in 
peace for the time, and note that by the 7th century the Latin 
language in the Eastern Empire had been almost superseded by the 
Greek, and that Christianity was effecting moral changes in the 
extinction of infanticide and a great modification of the evils of 
slavery. There was a vast amount of indifference to religion among 
the cultured classes, but there is no doubt that society in the 
Byzantine Empire has been much too sweepingly condemned for 
cowardice and corruption by those writers who have accepted all 
the statements of Gibbon. The contest with the Saracens, soon to 
be noticed, refutes the accusation of cowardice, and the charges 
of immorality levelled against the Byzantine people are deserved in 
no greater measure than they would be in any modern society. 

The Spain conquered by the Romans, peopled by Celts, Iberians, 
and the mixed race called Celtiberians, and by descendants of 
Carthaginian and Greek colonists, was a country whose inhabitants 
were, in the main, hardy, temperate, brave, and warlike. Their 
sturdy resistance to the Roman arms, which taxed the ability and 
energy of the best generals to overcome, proves their strong 
attachment to national or tribal independence. When the work 
of conquest was completed, in the days of Augustus, Spain became 
more Romanised than any other country in language and manners. 
In spite of the introduction, at a later period, of a considerable 



Spain — Frank Kingdoms 189 

Arabic element into the tongue, the modern Spanish can be to 
a large degree understood, without any special study, by a classical 
scholar. Latin was. the language of the educated classes, and the 
tongue and literature of Greece and Rome were taught in the 
schools. Under the Empire some of the chief Latin authors were 
natives of Spain, as the two Senecas ; the poets Lucan, Martial, 
and Silius Italicus ; and the great rhetorician Quintilian. Chris- 
tianity rapidly spread through the country. A bishop of Cordova 
was a leading prelate at the Council of Nicaea in a.d. 325, and 
Prudentius, somewhat later, almost the first Latin Christian poet, 
was a native of northern Spain. Two centuries after his period, 
Isidore, bishop of Seville, a man of admirable character, was 
the most learned writer of the West. With the decline of the 
Western Empire, Spain also sank in moral character and military 
power. The best soldiers had all been withdrawn to serve in legions 
quartered in different parts of the vast dominions of Rome, and 
luxury and sensuality had sapped the energies of the higher classes. 
The mass of the people were either slaves or serfs bound to the 
soil, and the middle or burgher class were full of discontent under 
a heavy burden of taxation. No means of effective resistance 
to resolute invaders could be found, and hence the Suevi and 
the Visigoths had an easy prey. For over 200 years the Goths 
were in possession of the country, and they, becoming quite as 
immoral and corrupt as the Roman nobles who had preceded 
them, did little to improve the condition of their subjects. The 
middle and lower classes were in the same state as in the last 
days of the Empire, and all was ready for the new conquest soon 
to be related. 

The Frank monarchy was by far the greatest which arose 
on the ruins of the Roman Empire. Towards the end of the 
5th century the Salic or Salian Franks, one branch of this large- 
limbed, long-haired, blue-eyed athletic race of warriors, were settled 
in the country now called Belgium, as a democratic nation of men 
who, in the intervals of peace, lived by hunting, fishing, the rearing 
of cattle, and the tilling of gardens, fields, and vineyards. The 
only social ranks, below the hereditary monarch of powers limited 
by the tribal assembly, were the chiefs or counts, the • free 
Franks or body of the nation, and the slaves taken in war. In 481, 
the new king was Chlodovech or Chlodwig (in modern German, 
" Ludwig "), a name which is, in French, corrupted into " Clovis " 
and the more modern "Louis." This lad of 15 was an ambitious, 



190 A History of the World 

crafty, arrogant ruler, who began a course of conquest by attacking 
and defeating in 486 Syagrius, the governor of north-eastern Gaul, 
and annexing the country as far as the Seine. The Burgundian 
kingdom in the valley of the Rhone was then made tributary, and 
the land between the Seine and the Loire was overcome. In 496 
the Alemanni, or Germans of the Black Forest, Switzerland, and the 
Vosges, invaded the Frankish territory, and were utterly defeated 
and brought to submission in a battle near Cologne. Chlodwig and 
his people then adopted the Christian faith of his wife Clothild 
(Clotilda), a Burgundian princess, and on Christmas-day of the same 
year (496) the monarch and 3,000 of his warriors, with the 
women and children, were baptised at Rheims by good old Bishop 
Remigius. The conversion of the king was followed by cruel and 
treacherous acts which brought the realm of the Ripuarian Franks, on 
the middle Rhine and the Moselle, into the possession of Clovis. His 
course of conquest was greatly aided by his having become an ortho- 
dox Catholic, which gained for him the strong sympathy of the 
Catholic clergy among the Arian Goths of Gaul. The Visigoths 
were defeated in a battle near Poitiers, and the western territory 
was subdued as far south as the Garonne. The Eastern emperor 
Anastasius, after the victory over the West Goths, conferred on 
Chlodwig the titles of " Patrician " and " Consul," and the favour of 
the Bishops of Rome or Popes was conciliated for the Frankish 
conquerors. 

On the death of Chlodwig, at Paris, in 511, the great kingdom, 
divided among his four sons, retained a certain unity in the fact that 
all the subjects considered themselves members of one state. Further 
territory was conquered east of the Rhine (Thuringia and Franconia), 
and in 536 Provence was acquired. In the subsequent history 
various divisions and reunions of territory occurred, with family feuds 
and wars of a horrible character. In the way of government, Dukes 
and Counts arose as rulers of larger and smaller districts, and these 
Merowingian kings of the Franks, as they are called from an early 
semi-mythical king Merowig, founded feudalism in adopting the 
Roman custom of granting lands {benefices or fiefs) to the Dukes and 
Counts, and to staff-officers, on condition of military service to the 
sovereign as " lord " of a " vassal " or " man." The system of 
feudal-tenures thus had its origin in a combination of Roman and 
Teutonic ideas, the holder of lands in the Roman Empire being 
bound to serve the state, in the German system to serve a person. 
A new aristocracy arose when the landholders gained hereditary 



I 

inta of lands I 

on the s.uiu- I 

i) in war. I 

■ 

and 

lal <>r 
• r of :';.' of the i 

nd of ministers tn this , 

i by the : 
• 
chokl, an ider of the ft udal 

■lie in the Krankish k; mportance, as the 

lical auth 
. anil the men 

of v 

Is of the Mayor oi 
lily of th P 
( ine of tii virtual >■ 

' the wh 

..or northern 
n . 1 [e h u 

: 
I 

His son < and 

.1 warrior, wh 

! the 

" Kr ,i. n 1 1 1.. 

■ 

: 
. I 



192 A History of the World 

Cassi (Hertfordshire), Damnonii (south-west to Land's End), the 
Brigantes between the H umber and the Tyne, the Silures in South 
Wales. The religion was the well-known Druidism, the priests of 
which were the arbiters of disputes and the judges of crime. The 
creed included a belief in the immortality of the soul and the 
doctrine of transmigration ; the ritual offered human sacrifices. The 
artistic nature of the Celts, with its bold and active fancy and love 
of music, had its instinctive wants met by the performances of the 
class called Bards, who sang to the strains of a rude harp the exploits 
and genealogies of chiefs, the wonders of nature, and the praises of 
the gods, in verse that abounded in metaphor and simile. The 
visits of Julius Cassar to the island* have been noted. The country 
was then mostly covered by forest and marsh, with a few clearings 
for the growth of corn, and the towns were collections of timbered 
or wattled huts, surrounded by a deep ditch, and a defence of 
felled trees. Far removed from mere barbarism, the Britons were 
subject to the authority of chiefs ; miners and smelters of their 
native tin ; tillers of the soil in the more civilised south-eastern 
district; fabricators of swords, shields, spears, and war-chariots; 
exporters of lead, tin, slaves, hunting-dogs, the skins of wild animals 
and domestic cattle, and of the delicious oysters of Rutupioe 
(Richborough, in Kent), dear to the Roman epicures; importers 
of brass, salt, earthenware, and woven fabrics from Gaul. The 
excavation of barrows or sepulchral mounds has disclosed bodkins, 
necklaces, beads, drinking-cups, and urns ; and prior to the Roman 
conquest Cunobelin, king of the Trinobantes, having his capital at 
Camalodunum (either Colchester or Maldon, in Essex), had a coinage 
probably of British workmanship. The Roman conquest began in 
a.d. 43, under the emperor Claudius, and was carried on by legions 
under the command of Vespasian, Titus, and other generals. The 
fierce and determined resistance of .the Britons, under leaders such 
as Caradoc (Caractacus), king of the Silures, and the great outbreak 
under Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, were overcome by a.d. 62. 
The conquest of the country south of the Clyde and the Forth was 
completed between 78 and 84 by the famous Julius Agricola, father- 
in-law of the historian Tacitus, whose eulogistic memoir of the great 
and good Roman ruler is one of the finest things in that class of 
literature. The Ordovices, a powerful tribe in North Wales, were 
subdued. The ground won was firmly held by the planting of forts 
and garrisons at suitable points, and conciliation brought many 
natives to submission. The warfare of Agricola ended with his great 



i Hid 

■ 

I 

II in tow • municipal rule. Th< 

! in 
in. 

.1 provim e <>( the 
ind rem 
ilc the northern • ibled b) 

f armed 
h and th l I the 

I earthen tun 
Firth. Durii 

and in the ; 
half '<( the 4th 
I by the 
■ 

. th the arrival <»f • ml, and 

martyr- 
. and 

: I 

t British < 

n i 
■ ■ 

.ui«l the 
:n Britain. In .n; th 

■ 
■ 



194 A History of the World 

owners dwelling in rural districts. Roman arts and literature had 
little sway, and the scanty and superficial civilisation which the 
Britons received from their Roman masters was nearly swept away 
by the English conquest. The signs of Roman presence are well 
known. Traces of their straight and durable roads may be seen 
in most English counties. Watling Street led from Kent to the 
Forth ; Hermin Street from the Sussex coast to the Humber ; 
Ikenild Street from Caistor (near Norwich) to Dorchester ; and the 
Foss Way from Cornwall to Lincoln. Among the chief towns of 
the Roman time were Londinium {London), Camalodunum (probably 
Colchester), Rutupiae (Richborough, in the Isle of Thanet), Aquae 
Solis {Bath), Isca Silurum {Caerleon, in Monmouthshire), Glevum 
{Gloucester), Lindum {Lincoln), Deva {Chester), and Chesterford, 
near Cambridge, all these being coloniae or Roman settlements, 
where the land was held by Romans, and the Roman institutions 
were adopted without any change in the local government. Veru- 
lamium {St. Albans) and Eboracum ( York) were municipal cities, 
with special rights and privileges for the citizens. Venta Belgarum 
( Winchester) was an important place. The military occupation of 
the country, as has been already noted, is shown in such names of 
places as Chester, Castor (on the Nen), Caistor, Exeter, Lancaster, 
Gloucester, Manchester. The material signs of Roman occupation, 
in addition to the remains of roads, camps, and fortifications, consist 
of portions of villas, or country-houses, with mosaic pavements, 
bath-rooms, and other remains ; of towns unearthed at Wroxeter in 
Shropshire (the ancient Uriconium), and at Silchester in Hampshire ; 
and of countless objects of ornament and utility discovered in 
London, York, and other places, by workmen digging deep founda- 
tions for modern buildings — pottery and glass, sandal-soles, waxen 
tablets with the styles or pens of bone and wood, augers, saws, 
knives, coins, weaving-bobbins, bronze hair-pins, and many other 
articles. The state of peace, law, and order maintained by the 
Romans did much for the material prosperity of the country. The 
growth of corn increased so much as to cause a large exportation to 
other countries, and the emperor Julian, in the 4th century, built 
warehouses in his continental dominions for the storage of British 
cereals. Mining was al'-o greatly developed, in the tin of Cornwall 
and the lead of Somerset, and the pigs of lead in the British 
Museum, bearing the stamp of Domitian and Hadrian, confirm the 
words of Tacitus as to the mineral wealth of the island. In the 
Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, iron was largely mined and 



Britain and England 195 

smelted by the Romans, whose coins have been found in the pits 
from which the ore was taken. 

The Teutonic conquerors of Britain were the heathen Angles, 
Saxons, and Jutes, in this order of numbers and importance, coming 
respectively from the territories now forming Schleswig, the region 
south and west of Schleswig, and Jutland. The people of the 
coast were bold and hardy seamen, living by fishing and by the 
piracy which had long made them a terror to the south-east coast 
of Britain and the northern coast of Gaul. The inland folk were 
tillers of the soil and rearers of cattle, but warlike and also devoted 
to the chase. They lived in little settlements called townships, 
from the tun, or hedge and ditch that formed the outer defence. 
The society included, firstly, the eorlas (earls), or nobles, from whom 
were chosen, by the people, rulers in peace and leaders in war. The 
title of "ealdorman" was given to such a leader, and in the new 
home such a man often became royal by success in war and assumed 
the title of " king." The ceorlas (churls, a term that became degraded 
after the Norman conquest), meaning "the men," as opposed to 
slaves, were the main body of freemen. Self-government, the proof of 
personal and political freedom, existed in the village-council ; the 
hundred-court, representing the freemen of a number of villages ; and 
the great council (witan) of the tribe, who elected the head or king, 
usually from some one noble family. This body included, in theory, 
all freemen of the tribe, but was soon limited to the more wealthy 
and powerful, and became a kind of house of peers. The thegns 
(thanes) were companions or select followers of the ealdorman, 
and became in England a class of minor nobles, members of the 
king's military household. The particulars of the conquest of 
Britain and its conversion into England (Engle-land, after the 
name of the Engle or Angles) are too well known to concern us 
here. In the course of less than a century and a half, from a.d. 450 
to near the close of the 6th century, a number of kingdoms were 
formed, by the Jutes in Kent ; by the Saxons in Sussex, Wessex 
Essex, and Middlesex ; by the Angles in East Anglia, Northumbria 
and Mercia. We may note that Wessex included the country 
south of the Thames between Middlesex, Surrey, and Sussex on 
the east and Devonshire on the west ; that Northumbria extended 
from the Humber to the Firth of Forth ; and that Mercia included 
much of the Midlands. 

The nature of the conquest may be described as complete, 
within certain limits ; as utterly cr very nearly overwhelming all 



196 A History of the World 

that preceded the coming of the conquerors. In other countries 
subdued by German tribes the conquerors adopted the laws, the 
social life, and the religion of the conquered race. The followers 
of the Angle and Saxon chiefs brought with them the paganism 
and superstitions of the Elbe, and were still offering worship to 
Thor and Woden while the German princes in Gaul, Italy, and 
Spain were adoring the relics of Christian martyrs and discussing 
with bishops and councils points of Christian theology. In the 
England which arose on the ruins of Roman Britain the Christian 
faith became for the time extinct, save in a few distant places 
to which the conquerors did not penetrate. The . name of the 
country was changed, and the language which has now been carried 
to the remotest parts of the earth, and is gaining supremacy over 
all other tongues, swept away the Latin speech of the dwellers 
in towns, and the British dialects of the country, except in the 
extreme south-west of southern Biitain, and in the region to 
which the English gave the name of " Wales," or " the foreign 
land." The long resistance made by the British was greatly aided 
by their holding of the Roman fortified towns against invaders 
who had no siege-apparatus, and by the woody and marshy 
character of the territory, to make their way through, which the 
Angles and Saxons had no corps of engineers, like their Roman 
predecessors, for the making of firm causeways, the bridging 
of streams, and the cutting of roads through forests. The conquest 
was facilitated, on the other hand, by the ships of that age, which 
could make their way far inland by the rivers. At the end of 
the 6th century, the country south of the Firths of Forth and 
Clyde was divided between Celts and Teutons by a line stretching 
nearly north and south midway in the breadth of the land. 
There were many Britons who remained among the English on 
the conquered territory, and by intermarriage the old British 
blood was kept and may still be traced in parts of the country 
whose people are the most Teutonic in race. The Celtic in- 
habitants, driven away to the west and north, formed several 
small states in the hilly country. In the south, it was long 
before the conquerors of Wessex advanced from the Salisbury 
Avon to the Exe and then to the Tamar, and finally subdued 
the British kingdom in Devon and Cornwall, called Damnonia 
or West Wales. Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire retained 
large numbers of the Britons. Wales, remaining wholly British, 
had several petty realms. The kingdom of Cumbria included 



Britain and England 197 

Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, extending from the 
Solway to the Mersey, and from the sea to the Pennine Hills, 
with its capital at Caerleol (Carlisle). In the south-west of Scot- 
land the British kingdom of Strathclyde had its chief town in 
Al-cluyd, now Dumbarton. 

During the 7th and 8th centuries the English were engaged 
in warfare with each other, and one kingdom after another gained 
supremacy *over its neighbours. At one time Kent, at another 
East Anglia, and then Northumbria, and, in their turns, Mercia 
and Wessex, became predominant. Thus Ethelbert of Kent, 
ruling from 590 to 616, the first who put forth written laws, was 
master over Essex, East Anglia, and Mercia. From 617 to 633 
Edwin of Northumbria was supreme over all Teutonic England 
except Kent, and was then defeated and killed by Penda of Mercia, 
the leader of a heathen reaction, ruling from 6.26 to 655. Oswald 
of Northumbria succumbed to the same fierce pagan, who was, 
at various times, supreme over Mercia, Essex, East Anglia, Wessex, 
and part of Northumbria. In 655 he, in his turn, was defeated 
and slain in battle with Oswin or Oswy of Northumbria (655-659). 
His son and successor Ecgfrith had much success against the 
Britons of Cumbria and Strathclyde, and took Lincolnshire from 
the king of Mercia. In 685 his life, and with it the power of 
Northumbria, ended in battle against the Picts at Nectansmere 
in Fifeshire. Ethelbald of Mercia (716-755), one of whose pre- 
decessors, Wulfhere, had been " over-lord " of Essex and Sussex, 
became master of the whole country seuth of the H umber. Offa, 
the great Mercian monarch, ruled from 758 to 796. He conquered 
Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex, and then turned his arms against 
the Welsh. Crossing the Severn, he took Pengwyrn, the capital 
of the king of Powys, on the east side of North Wales, and 
changed its name to Scrobbes-byrig (" the town in the scrub or 
bush "), now Shrewsbury. After planting English settlements west 
of the Severn, between the river and the mountains, he secured 
the new frontier by the famous and still partly existing Offa's 
Dyke, a huge rampart with a ditch, extending from the mouth 
of the Dee to that of the Wye. Wessex was prominent under 
Ine or Ina, king from 688 to 726. This just and wise ruler 
issued a famous code of laws, and conciliated the Britons of 
the south-west, after subjection, by allowing them to keep their 
lands and encouraging marriages between them and his English 
subjects. He became master of Kent, Essex, and London. In 
14 



198 A History of the World 

the west, in order to guard his conquests, he built a fortress on 
the Tone which became the town of Taunton. Civil strife caused 
Ina's abdication and pilgrimage to Rome, where he died in 728. 
During all this time we have been leaving our forefathers in their 
original heathenism. The great fact of the period was the con- 
version to Christianity, but before dealing with that, and with the 
union of the kingdoms under Egbert, we must turn to the early 
history of Ireland and Scotland. 

The early state of Ireland — wild, tangled, roadless territory, 
abounding in forests, streams, lakes, and in the bogs which still 
cover about one-sixth of the surface — is wrapt in mystery. We 
can only begin to deal with the country as historical after the 
beginning of the Christian era, when the rude Celtic tribes had 
bards styled Ollamhs or Sennachies, and men called Brehons as 
the judges and law-makers. The country was called "Scotia" 
from the Scoti, a Celtic people who took much of the land from 
previous possessors of their own race. There was no primogeniture 
or hereditary right. Before the death of a chieftain, one of his 
family, judged to be the fittest, was chosen " Tanist," or successor, 
by the clan. All the land belonged to the clan or sept, and was 
held by it for the general benefit, without any system of a feudal 
kind. In view of the modern land-question in Ireland, it is curious 
to find, in the Senchus-Mor, one of the two chief books of ancient 
Irish law, regulations on three rents : the rack rent, to be extorted 
from one of a strange tribe ; the fair rent, required from one of 
the same tribe ; and the stipulated rent, to be paid by either. 
There was a large class of " broken men," outcasts from mis- 
conduct or from the breaking-up of clans through intertribal war, 
and these, becoming like slaves or serfs, were attached to chiefs 
as his armed retainers, the fierce class known in later times as 
"kerns" and " galloglasses." In time of war they were forcibly 
quartered upon other chiefs, and thus arose the system of "coyne 
and livery," or compulsory entertainment for horse and men, which 
became most detrimental to the people in later times. There was 
no representative system of rule. The method of government 
was patriarchal ; the household looking up to its head, and he 
to the chief of the clan. Blood-relationship was the real bond of 
union, combined with the system of fosterage by which the 
children of the wealthy were nursed and brought up in poor 
families till the age of 13 in the case of daughters and 17 
for sons. 



Britain and England 199 

This system of tribes, clans, or septs, a local organisation beyond 
the limits of which no person or property was sacred, had the 
same effect as in the Scottish Highlands, where life, in the wild 
times, was largely spent in fighting, plundering, and burning. 
Under such a system, men could not settle down to an orderly life, 
and the ideas of patriotism and nationality, in the modern sense, 
were unknown. We have here the key, taken in connection with 
Ireland's lack of thorough conquest by a strong governing power in 
early days, to much of the subsequent history of a people whose 
character has presented the strangest combination of shrewdness, 
credulity, poetry, humour, piety, courage, lack of discipline, 
indolence, cleverness, amiability, and impracticability that ever was 
seen in the world. A new figure and a new element came on the scene 
in Ireland with St. Patrick, the great missionary who brought the 
people to the acceptance of Christianity. This remarkable man, 
born towards the end of the 4th century at Dumbarton, was 
carried off as a slave to Antrim. In a few years he escaped to Gaul, 
where he became a monk, first at Tours and then at Lerins, a group 
of small islands near Cannes. In 432, when he was about 60 
years old, he went as a missionary-bishop to Ireland, and landed 
in Strangford Lough. His success was wonderful and rapid, and 
the new faith was soon founded in Meath, Connaught, and Ulster. 
In about 20 years, numerous churches had been built, bishops 
consecrated, and priests ordained, and the Irish became the most 
enthusiastic of Christians. We have already seen their missionary- 
work in Germany, and we shall shortly find them engaged in Scotland. 
A glorious time of spiritual and intellectual light in Ireland had 
come, and during the 7th and 8th centuries the country 
played a really great part in European history. Students came in 
large numbers from Britain, Germany, and Gaul, and were main- 
tained and educated without charge in the Irish monasteries and 
schools. The work was carried on by St. Columba, a native of 
Donegal, whose chief scene of labour was, however, in the neigh- 
bouring country. Artistic advance went hand in hand with the 
development of Christianity, and the monks of Ireland became 
architects, painters, carvers, gilders, bookbinders, makers of crosiers 
and chalices in gold and silver, carvers of crosses, and writers of 
most elaborately decorated manuscripts. The political history, from 
the 5 th to the 8th century, includes much petty warfare between 
the clans, and the more important matter of the aggregation of clans 
under the rule of greater chieftains, ending in the formation of what 



200 A History of the World 

are called the kingdoms of Meath, Connaught, Munster, Leinster, 
and Ulster. A time of trouble was coming in the Danish invasions 
which were to fill the country with misery and ruin. The black 
ships of the piratical Northmen first appeared off the coast about 
790, and landed their men on the east side of the island. The 
cathedral of Armagh, the see of St. Patrick, was burned, the monks 
were slain, and the whole east coast was occupied by the invaders. 
The interior was then assailed as far as Athlone, and fresh hordes 
kept coming from the north. The famous round towers of Ireland, 
concerning which antiquaries have puzzled themselves with so much 
needless ingenuity, were erected in those evil days, and, being 
always found connected with churches or monasteries, were un- 
doubtedly places of defence against the Danes. When the prows 
of the piratical vessels were seen, or an advance of foes inland was 
reported, the defenceless inmates of monasteries took refuge in these 
keeps with the church-plate and other valuables, and the place having 
been provisioned, and the ladders drawn up to the door set many 
feet from the ground, a siege of some length could be endured. It 
was chiefly on the coast that the Danes established themselves, 
gathering the plunder of the country into towns which they built 
and fortified. This was the origin of the cities of Dublin, Limerick, 
and Cork, and of Waterford and Wexford. The Danish invasions 
and partial conquest of the country were most disastrous to Ireland. 
Their ravages, along with the intertribal wars, almost swept away 
for a long period the civilisation which had arisen under Christian 
influences. The Northmen, in Ireland, were not soon civilised, as 
in England, by contact with the invaded people, but remained 
heathen, foreign tyrants and oppressors, utterly hated by the people, 
and waging ruthless war against them and their religion. 

We have seen, in the Roman period, the conquest of some of 
southern Scotland, and the invasion of Britain by Picts and Scots. 
The earliest historical inhabitants were called Caledonians by the 
Romans, the Picts being possibly a mixture of Celts and of a non- 
Aryan race, and dwelling mostly to the north of the Forth and 
Clyde. In the 5th century a.d. the Celtic tribe called Scoti migrated 
from Ireland and settled in the Western Isles and Argyle, forming 
a state called Dalriada, and spreading thence to the south and east. 
In the end their name was given to the whole country. We have 
seen that the English conquerors settled in the district called Lothian, 
while Galloway, in the south-west, was still held by the Picts. The 
English speech gradually spread on the south of the Forth and 



!' ::;iin an I I tnd 

1 :tis|i. In 61 ; 

sin limit a fort at Dill 
i from him Edinburgh. I mm h interti 

- 

in frequent conflii :. Common 
tended to brii 
and nited nati I 

the historic kingdom rth, and 

on the banks of I donation bein 

it on the famous Btone now in 
p Kenneth MacAlpin became rulei of 
; > was king of th 

I what may I" 
1 kingdom of Scotland, though the territory then comprised only 
.mil parts of Dumbarton and Forfar. 

Christianity must now be dealt with. 

St. N have Ween horn a 

: 1 mil- h ' 

In I mous 

rn to the 
it impuls< faith 

led a-> " • 
>rn m I) n 521, and ' 

na, where 

Mtre of m 
. and many m 

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1 



202 A History of the World 

Teviot became a preacher, under some Lindisfarne monks, and 
had much success through his sound sense, humour, pleasant 
ways, and real piety. Dying at Lindisfarne, after resigning his 
bishopric, St. Cuthbert was regarded in early days as the greatest 
of the northern saints. His shrine was much visited by pilgrims, 
and a cloth which he had used at mass became a standard borne 
in the northern armies fighting against the Scots. It waved over 
English heads at Flodden, and it perished by a bigot's hands when 
it was burnt by Calvin's sister, wife of the first Protestant dean 
of Durham. We now go southwards to see the introduction of 
Christianity direct from Rome. In 597; 1,300 years ago as we 
write this record, St. Austin, as he should be called to distinguish 
him from the great St. Augustine, arrived in the Isle of Thanet 
with a band of monks, dispatched by Pope Gregory the Great. 
The mass of English in the district, numbering only 2,000 or 3,000, 
were pagans, like king Ethelbert of Kent, but Christianity had 
a foothold there through the king's wife Bertha, the Christian 
daughter ot a king of Paris. A Frankish bishop had come over 
with her, and she worshipped in the little church called St. Martin's, 
near Canterbury, built in the Roman times. The missionaries 
from Rome were allowed to preach their faith, and within a year 
Ethelbert and many of his subjects were baptised. The new faith 
spread, and Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury, 
sees being also founded at Rochester and London. Paulinu-, 
one of St. Austin's followers, was the first bishop of York. Sc. 
David, son of a Welsh prince, was the apostle of his native country, 
and became bishop of Caerleon, and then of Menevia, afterwards 
St. David's. The Christian Church in England was placed on a 
firm basis in 664, when the Synod of Whitby settled its adherence 
to the Roman See and system, ' as distinguished from that of 
Ireland. A Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus, who was arch- 
bishop of Canterbury from 669 to 693, was the man who organised 
the episcopacy and established the parochial system. The founding 
of many new sees and the later settlement of the tithes for the 
payment of the clergy gave the Church the form which lasted 
through mediaeval times. 

Egbert, of the royal line of Cerdic, the Saxon chieftain who 
landed on the shore of Southampton Water in 495 and founded 
the kingdom of Wessex, had been driven into exile, first at the 
court of Offa of Mercia, and then of Karl, king of the Franks. 
Under this last great ruler he had, during 13 years, been trained 



The Saracenic Conquests 203 

in military and political affairs in such wise as to fit him for 
the part he was to play in his native country. He had fought 
with his friend against Lombards and Huns, and was well versed 
in royal duties when in 802, by the choice of the Wessex nobles, 
he assumed the rule of that kingdom. Cornwall was reduced to 
pay tribute ; Welsh invaders were defeated ; the king of Mercia 
was beaten in 825, and three years later, either through force or 
voluntary submission, the supremacy of Egbert was recognised 
by Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, while Kent, Sussex, 
and Essex were ruled by kinsmen of his appointment. He thus 
became in fact, though not in title, king of all England. Before 
his death in 837 he was much troubled in Wessex and Kent 
by attacks of the Danes or Northmen, closing his reign, however, 
with a victory in the west over their forces united with the Britons 
of Cornwall. 



Chapter II.— The Saracenic Conquests; Karl the Great; 
the Holy Roman Empire. 

Of all the revolutions which have had a permanent influence 
upon the civil history of mankind, there is none more remarkable, 
none that could be less anticipated by human prudence, as to 
its origin, extent, and duration, than the material and moral 
conquest effected by Mohammedanism, the religious faith styled 
Islam. The human agents' of this marvellous religious and political 
change were the Arabs or Saracens, the only people of Semitic 
race that have played a great part in history since the days of 
Carthage. The religion which was founded by Mohammed is 
the last of three great religions which have come out from among 
Semitic nations. All of these faiths expressly taught the unity 
of God, and forbade the worship of idok 1 . Judaism, Christianity, 
Islam — these are the three, and the last may be briefly defined as 
a confused, imperfect form of the second, in its ethical essence 
of resignation to the Divine will. Islam means, in fact, " Denial 
of Self," complete submission to the will and service of Allah, in 
the articles of faith, commands, and ordinances revealed to and 
put forth by Mohammed. It acknowledges four great teachers 
of mankind : Abraham, the friend of God ; Moses, the prophet 
of God ; Jesus Christ, the W T ord of God ; and Mohammed, the 
Apostle of God. Islam is certainly better than Judaism, as 



204 A History of the World 

recognising the miracles, the teaching, and the Messiahship of 
Jesus Christ. It is a reformed Judaism, eminently adapted to be 
a civilising and elevating religion for barbarous tribes, as being 
a step upward, but not a step so high as the lofty and spiritual 
advance claimed from the adherents of Christianity. Its cosmopolitan 
character in being not, like the exclusive Judaism, confined to one 
nation, but extended to the whole world, and its preaching of a practical 
brotherhood, the social equality of all Moslems, give the new religion 
a vast attraction in the immediate bribe of admittance to a social caste. 
The morality taught in the Koran, meaning " the best reading," 
" the matter to be read," is of a very high character, including the 
virtues of benevolence, liberality, modesty, forbearance, patience, 
endurance, sincerity, frugality, decency, straightforwardness, love 
of peace and truth, and, especially, trust in God and submission 
to His will. The vices specially denounced are injustice, piiie, 
falsehood, revengefulness, avarice, prodigality, suspicion, and 
debauchery, and gambling is held to be so wicked that no 
gambler's testimony is valid in a court of law. 

Such was the religion that, in the first half of the 7th 
century, arose in Arabia, a region which had for ages remained in 
a strange solitude, undisturbed by the conquests of Alexander, 
unsubdued by the arms of Rome. There, about a.d. 570, 
Mohammed was born at Mecca, son of a poor merchant belonging 
to the powerful tribe of the Koreish, the most famous of all the 
descendants of Ishmael, and the head of the tribes whose centre 
of worship and of tribal sovereignty was Mecca. The old patriarchal 
faith of the days of Abraham had become a degrading idolatry, and 
some hundreds of images were displayed to view and worship in the 
Kaaba or temple at Mecca. The young Mohammed passed his 
youth, like David, in the tendance of sheep, and was soon noted 
by his family and friends as shy, meditative, and trustworthy. 
His temperament was nervous, excitable, and sympathetic; he 
was subject to ecstatic dreams and occasional epileptic fits. His 
person, in mature manhood, was that of a middle-sized, rather thin, 
broad-shouldered, strongly built man, fair-skinned for one of his 
race ; with black curly hair flowing round a massive head, lit up 
by large jet-black eyes, overhung with thick lashes. A large, well- 
formed, slightly bent nose, and a long beard gave further dignity to 
his appearance. When he was 40 years of age, after long brooding 
over the idolatry of his people, and the concomitant vices of such 
worship, and urged by dreams and asserted revelations on which 



The Saracenic Conquests 205 

we can pass no judgment, Mohammed came forth as a religious 
reformer, proclaiming his creed with the assertion of the existence of 
an almighty, all-wise, all-just, merciful, everlasting, indivisible Deity, 
whose favour was to be obtained chiefly by prayer, fasting, and 
almsgiving. Resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell were articles 
of faith. Like other prophets, the Arabian messenger of Allah had 
at first little honour among his own kindred and countrymen, his 
earliest adherents being his loving wife Kadija, many years his 
senior, a lad named Ali, and a freedman whom the new prophet 
adopted as his son. He was well acquainted wiih Judaism, but his 
knowledge of Christianity was probably confined to a few apocryphal 
books. In four years' time a small body of followers had been 
gained, but the Meccans arose at last in wrath against the man who 
denounced the ancestral idols, and in July, 622, he and a small band 
of adherents fled from Mecca to Medina. This flight begins the 
Mohammedan era styled the Hegira, or " departure." From this 
time the new faith was aided by the use of the sword, and the 
religious fanaticism of its adherents, belonging to a peculiarly 
susceptible race, was powerfully stimulated by the belief that death 
in the cause ensured admission to Paradise. Worldly ambition and 
religious zeal were combined in the souls of the warriors, and the 
annihilation of the mocking Jews of Medina was followed by the 
conquest of Mecca, the destruction of all the idols, and the establish- 
ment as a system of the Jehad or " Religious War," by which all 
men had given to them the choice of " the Koran, the Tribute, or 
the Sword." The prophet's life was ended at Medina by fever in 
632, as he was preparing to maich beyond the borders of Arabia. 
The character of the founder of Islam was a mixture of sincerity and 
imposture, benevolence and cruelty, real enthusiasm and cunning 
calculation. He was human, and his career was sullied by errors 
and crimes, but he has now ceased to be regarded as a mere inventor 
of pretended revelations. His really heroic character was adorned 
by great virtues, and, upon the whole, he well deserved the extra- 
ordinary influence which he acquired over his followers. The faults 
and failures of Mohammedanism are due to the founder's ignorance, 
and to his grievous error in quarrelling with the Jews and Christians 
through a feeling of jealousy, instead of endeavouring to secure their 
aid as allies against idolatry. 

Before describing the conquests achieved by the armed adherents 
of Islam, a religion now numbering 200,000,000 of believers, we may 
note some causes of its incipient success. The way for a purer faith 



2o6 A History of the World 

among a serious and reflecting people, as the Arabs were, had been 
in some measure prepared by Jewish and Christian teaching. 
Mohammed skilfully incorporated tenets, usages, and traditions which 
he found existing around him, and he attracted men by the simplicity 
of the creed, and of the ritual, with its fastings, pilgrimages, regular 
prayers and ablutions, abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and 
almsgiving. A visible standard of practice was thus set up, and the 
believer was encouraged to win Heaven by a steady adherence to 
a system of discipline within every man's reach. This reformed 
Judaism swept swiftly over Africa and Asia partly because, inferior 
as it was to Christianity at its best, it was decidedly superior to the 
Christianity then prevalent in those regions. The pure religion of 
Jesus Christ had been set aside for abstruse metaphysical dogmas. 
The Christian teachers were striving against the vices of a licentious 
age by demanding too much from human nature. They extolled 
the celestial merit of celibacy and the angelic excellence of virginity. 
The road to holiness lay through the sordid seclusion of a monastic 
cell. The people had become really polytheists, worshipping a 
crowd of martyrs, saints, end angels. The upper classes were 
effeminate and corrupt ; the middle classes were overwhelmed by 
taxation ; and the slaves were without hope in the present or the 
future. On such a world the new faith of Islam came like a 
blast of pure air from the desert, making an end of vain 
theological disputes, artificial virtues, religious follies and frauds, and 
perverted moral sentiments. It set manliness against monkishness. 
It gave hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and a due 
recognition to the fundamental facts of human nature. Islam, at 
the outset and at its best, swept away a mass of corruption and 
superstition like a consuming and purifying fire, and it was assuredly 
not by the sword alone that it attained so rapid and enduring a hold 
upon a large portion of the human race, spreading itself, within a 
century from its founder's death, over Syria, Persia, northern Africa, 
and Spain. 

The successors of Mohammed in religious and temporal authority 
were styled Caliphs (or Khalifs, Califs), the first being the wise and 
good Abu-bekr, father of the prophet's favourite wife Ayeshah, elected 
by an assembly of the faithful. All men who were approached by the 
armies were called upon to embrace the new faith, to pay tribute 
for the keeping of their old faith, but with the abolition of idolatry, 
or to die. Omar (634-644) conquered the rich province of Syria, 
defended though it was by numerous armies and fortified cities, 



1 h. 207 

and the < 'aliph hi 

nan! Ami ntire 

t the hi I >lani 

•is t-» ihi ' 
the : dynast) and t-> the I and famo 

Under < khmai . . I northern 

( uil w.irs between rival < laim 

I tin- 71I) 
tury the | ntine) Empii n the 

the Atlai 1 1 an. 'I Ik- 1 
the faith I I »ple <>f Puni< 1 

ame united with the Aral 
1 mitv .tin. fr< m northern Al 

■ I after I 1 
ity of K in It 

• 

tern dominions, wi 
a tii fare with P< 

:i!i!.<- I \ 

: by 
in armai 

in that :■ 

H 

I 

■ 



2o8 A History of the World 

with the loss of many thousands of men, from a frost of 12 
weeks' duration. In the spring large reinforcements arrived for 
the besiegers, but the fireships of Leo burnt the Egyptian fleet 
as it lay at anchor, and a sudden attack cut to pieces a body of 
Saracens on the Asiatic shore. The Bulgarians, old foes of the 
empire, now gave aid by coming down from the Balkans, and 
routing a Saracen army of observation near Adrianople. The 
enemy were wearied out, and thus ended the last great Saracen 
enterprise against Constantinople, though for centuries longer there 
were frequent border-struggles between the emperors and the caliphs. 
It is probable that Leo the Isaurian thus conferred as great a benefit 
upon Christendom as that which will be soon narrated. The 
victorious Saracens of Syria and the more distant East rapidly 
degenerated through success. The vices of luxury fell upon the 
abstemious Arabs of the desert in the fruitful valleys of Damascus 
and Bassora, and the Mohammedan sovereigns of those regions, 
enriched by the tributes of enslaved peoples, lost strength and 
energy in" a sensual life. 

We have seen the corrupt condition of the Visigoths in Spain at 
the time when they were confronted, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, 
by the hardy, fervent warriors of Islam, flushed with conquest of 
all the territory from the Nile to the western ocean. Attracted by 
reports of the beauty and richness of Phe land, its pastures and 
rivers, olives and vines, cities and palaces, Musa, the governor of 
northern Africa under the Caliph of Damascus, sent Tarif, one of 
his generals, in 710, with a small force, to make a preliminary raid 
on the coast of Andalusia. This leader landed at the place called 
from him Tarifa, the southernmost town of Europe, still of quite 
Moorish aspect, with its Alcazar or palace and battlemented Arab 
walls. The town is also of interest as having given rise to the word 
"tariff," or table of customs-regulations, from the duties collected at 
the port by the Moors. In a short time Tarif returned, having 
plundered Algeciras, with good news as to the defenceless condition 
of the country, and then Musa sent a larger force, about 7,000 men, 
under another leader, Tarik, whose name is immortalised in that of 
the great Rock near which he disembarked, the Gibraltar corrupted 
from the Arabic Gebel-al-Tarik, or Tarik's hill. The invader was 
soon met by the whole force of the Goths under their king 
Roderick, who was returning from the suppression of a rising among 
the Basques in the north. The two armies met in 711 on the banks 
of a little river near the Guadalete, which runs into the Straits hard 



i Conquest , 

I 
been increased, l>\ a i ;nt of 5,0c I 

M 

I 

it the finding <>f ins h 

ttle, in. ik> 

1. This 

, and |>! 

inder the 

rult- A little < Christian I i i >m, und< 

ted in the north, the realn 
I .it the I ■ 

! by the S rathon by thi 

the first \ 

thus that, among the 1 
• mi of ful 

I 
i 

e the triumph <<f theii kinsmen, the Arabs, over I 

■ 

n 7 1 j Musa, th< 

■ 
* arried on ; 

Narbonne and < 

\ 

i 



no A History of the World 

world, a battle which was to give judgment between the claims of 
Christianity and Islam to hold sway in Europe. It was, as regarded 
the future of Greek, Roman, and Teutonic civilisation, the last 
great contest between the Crescent and the Cross, and it ended in 
one of those signal deliverances which have affected for ever the 
interests of mankind, in deciding for the German against the 
Arab in a struggle for the mastery of the old Roman world. 
Exactly a century had passed away since the death of Mohammed, 
when Karl, son of the Frankish ruler Pipin of Heristal, and 
duke of the Austrasian Franks, the bravest and most thoroughly 
Germanic part of the nation, met Abd-er-Rahman and his motley 
array. The Frank warrior, now in the prime of his years, had 
done much hard fighting against heathen Frisians, Bavarians, 
Saxons, and Thuringians, who had assailed with peculiar ferocity, 
the Christianised Germans on the left bank of the Rhine. Thus 
skilled in warfare and full of courage, he commanded, in his Frank 
militia, warriors quite as brave and hardy as the foemen, and superior 
to them in stature and strength. The Saracen horsemen, with their 
tawny skins, white turbans, glittering spear-heads, and curved 
Damascus blades, saw before them fair-haired shaggy giants in steel 
casques, and cuirasses of leather interwoven with iron plates, each 
wielding a long heavy sword, or a huge iron mace and battle-axe. 
After six days of skirmishing, the decisive conflict began on a Sunday 
morning of October, 732. The wild riders dashed in vain charges 
against the sturdy Frankish foot. Their turbans could not resist 
the blows of sword or mace, while their light scimitars fell harmless 
on the helms and corselets. The ground became piled with the 
bodies of men and horses. A rear-attack of spearmen of Aquitaine, 
led by Duke Eudo, with the light of fresh steel glittering amidst 
thick clouds of dust, threw the Moslem host into confusion. 
Abd-er-Rahman died fighting, and the next day's sun showed the 
enemy fleeing towards the Pyrenees, leaving their camp, with 
abundant spoil, to the victors. The ponderous blows dealt on this 
great day by Duke Karl, as he clove his way with his mace through 
the enemy's ranks, gave him the surname of " Martel," or " the 
Hammer." A bound had been set to Saracen conquest towards the 
north, and their hold on Gaul was confined, until its close in 797, to 
Narbonne and the districts at the foot of the Pyrenees. 

The little Christian kingdom of the north of Spain was increased, 
under Alfonso I., by the addition of Galicia, and the recapture 
of Salamanca, Astorga, and other towns, and, with Biscay and 



Karl the Great 2 1 1 

Navarre in the east, his dominion soon included about a fourth 
of the whole country. At the end of the 8th century, the boundary 
between the Christian north and Moslem south agreed roughly 
with the course of the Sierra de Guadarrama, the range running 
north-eastwards from Coimbra in Portugal to Zaragoza (Saragossa), 
and thence with the river Ebro. The Moors thus held the fertile 
valleys of the Tagus, the Guadiana, and the Guadalquivir, a name 
corrupted from the Arabic Wady-al-kebir, " the Great River." 
The country was governed with justice, mildness, and wisdom by 
its Arab conquerors. A light poll-tax was levied on Christians 
and Jews ; the land-tax was raised in equal proportions from 
Christians, Jews, and Moslems. There was no religious persecu- 
tion, and the Christians openly declared their preference for 
Moorish rule over that of the Visigoths. The old slavery was a 
very humane institution in Mohammedan hands, according to the 
founder's strict precepts in the Koran. The bulk of the slaves 
became prosperous tillers of the soil under their masters, and 
many at once gained freedom by adopting the faith of Islam. 
This course was also taken by many large landowners and other 
men of good position. The conquest was assuredly a benefit 
to the conquered. The Arabs or Moors, the victors who were 
really made up of many once hostile tribes or clans, the majority 
being Berbers or the true Moors, were soon at issue with each 
other, on religious and political grounds, both in Africa and Spain. 
A civil war ensued, in which the Berbers were routed by the 
Arabs of Andalusia, and they had, in their turn, a long conflict 
with Syrian auxiliaries brought in to their aid. At last another 
Abd-er-Rahman, from Bagdad, a survivor of the family of Caliphs 
there deposed and almost extirpated by the founder of the Abbaside 
Caliphs, descended from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed, arrived 
in Spain and became by conquest in 756 the despotic and cruel 
Caliph of Cordova, independent of the Eastern ruler. His reign 
ended in 788, and there we leave Spain until the middle of the 
9th century, and take up the career of one of the foremost men 
in history. 

Karl, surnamed " the Great," styled " Charlemagne " by French 
writers, son of Pipin of Heristal, became in 771, by the death 
of his brother, sole ruler of the Frank kingdom. In a reign of 
45 years (769-814) he proved himself to be a great general, 
statesman, legislator, administrator, and civiliser, stained indeed 
by acts of ferocious cruelty towards heathen opponents, but grand 



212 A History of the World 

in conception and active in execution beyond most of the sons 
of men that have gained positions of supreme power. Strong 
alike in mind and body, he was equal to either Julius Caesar or 
Napoleon in the intense, restless energy which enabled him to play 
so many parts — in the field of war, in religious controversy, in 
the encouragement of learning, in the reform of coinage, in 
diplomacy and statecraft. His vast genius is shown in the European 
history which preceded and followed his tenure of power. He 
stands out like a mass of solid land between two weltering wastes 
of waters ; he divides two periods of turbulence, in the latter of 
which none was found competent to wield his sceptre, none could 
draw Ulysses' bow. Omitting details of his 53 separate expedi- 
tions against Frisians, Bavarians, Saxons, Avars, Slavs, and Danes ; 
against the Lombards in Italy, and the Saracens in Spain, Sardinia, 
and Corsica ; and against Bretons and Aquitanians in Gaul, we 
summarise his conquests by stating that his dominion at last 
included nearly all the territory that forms Germany, Belgium, 
France, Switzerland, northern Italy, and the north-east of Spain. 
The Saxons were crushed in a series of wars, and forced to accept 
Christianity. The Lombards were conquered in 774, and their 
king Desiderius was deposed. In the Spanish expedition of 778, 
territory as far as the Ebro was taken ; the large rear-guard of Karl 
being, however, destroyed on his return by the Basque mountaineers, 
in the famous pass of Roncesvalles. Bavaria was conquered, and 
its duke deposed ; the Avars of Hungary were overcome, and the 
country annexed, with the settlement of German colonists. The 
Slavonic tribes on the eastern borders of Germany were compelled 
to submit. The centre of the great empire was the Rhineland. 
The capitals were Rome in the south, and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) 
in the north, the latter being the emperor's favourite city, adorned 
by him with a palace and a beautiful church. There were also 
imperial residences at Engilenheim or Ingelheim, near the left 
bank of the Rhine between Menu (Mayence) and Bingen, and at 
Worms. 

Karl was a thorough German in character and sympathies. His 
strength and stature were almost superhuman ; in fight he was 
terrible and persistent ; his powers in swimming and hunting were 
such as none could' surpass. His army was composed of Frankish 
soldiers, and his literary work included the composition ot a German 
grammar, the gathering of the old Teutonic songs about heroes, and 
a decree against confining prayer in the churches to Hebrew, Greek, 



Karl the Great 213 

and Latin. In organising his vast dominion, Karl divided it into 
kingdoms, duchies, and counties. The country east of Bavaria 
became a province called the East March, and was the origin of 
the East Realm, Oesterreich, or Austria. The border-districts 
became " Marks," placed under Margraves or " Counts of Border- 
lands," responsible for the safety of the empire against foreign 
attacks. Imperial commissioners made periodical visits to different 
parts, hearing complaints and making reports to the emperor. Two 
assemblies were yearly held, composed of the leading laymen and 
bishops. Their functions lay in discussion and advice ; the making 
of new law rested with the emperor, who issued his capitularii or 
rescripts. As a protector of the Church, Karl created many 
bishoprics and monasteries, which were endowed with rich lands, 
and the payment of tithes was made compulsory throughout his 
dominions. The church-worship was improved by singers and 
musicians brought from Italy, and schools for the education of the 
clergy were founded at Tours and Paris. Among the learned men 
of his court were the great English scholar Alcuin, the honoured 
friend and adviser of Karl for 20 years ; the Lombard historian 
Paulus Diaconus ; and Eginhard of Franconia, who became superin- 
tendent of public buildings, and the author of the Latin life of Karl 
the Great, the most important biographical work of the middle 
ages. The schools founded in connection with monasteries by the 
advice of Alcuin helped, for several centuries of intellectual darkness, 
to keep learning in some sort alive. 

We now come to the notable event which was the restoration 
in a sense of the old Roman Empire. When Karl rescued the 
Papacy and the people of Rome from the Lombards in 774, his 
title became " King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician 
of the Romans," the latter part being bestowed by the Pope in 
the sense of "defender" or "protector." In 796 Leo III. came 
to the Papal chair, and two years later he had to flee to Karl for 
refuge from rebels. The king, as he still was, sent him back to 
Rome under due escort, and in 799 was once more in Italy. The 
Pope had, for the ends of the Papal temporal power, conceived the 
notion of reviving the old Roman Empire, the idea of which was 
still prominent in the minds of men. The Prankish king and the 
Roman pontiff were the two chief powers in the Christian world, 
and the rise of Mohammedanism had brought the common 
Christianity of Europe into stronger relief. The Byzantine emperors 
were wholly unable to defend western Christianity, and a great 
15 



214 A History of the World 

man had arisen, the founder, it was hoped, of an enduring dominion, 
who seemed well fitted to assume the sceptre of Julius and Augustus 
Caesar. On Christmas-day, a.d. 800, when Karl was hearing mass 
in the basilica of St. Peter, on the site of the great modern edifice, 
the Pope rose from his chair, as the reading of the Gospel ended, 
advanced to where the king knelt in prayer by the high altar, and 
placed the diadem of the Caesars upon his brow, while the multitude 
raised a shout in Latin " To Karl Augustus, crowned of God, the 
great and peaceful emperor, be life and victory." This was the 
beginning of the " Holy Roman Empire," " Holy" because its ruler 
was in close alliance, as protector and as wielder of the civil 
sword, with the spiritual head of the Church, " Roman " because 
he was crowned in Rome and in Western power represented the 
old imperial authority which had dominated the world. This was 
the central event of the middle ages, the connection of Church 
and State which made bishops and abbots as much a part of 
feudalism as counts and dukes. The new imperial authority was 
the headship of the world, and the first great holder of it, reviving 
order and culture, and moulding the West into a compact whole, 
with all of the wealth and knowledge and spirit that was left in 
Christian Europe, and controlling, as king, the great warlike power 
of the Franks, left much behind him which subsequent anarchy 
could not destroy, but on which men would build for many 
generations. 

The death of Karl in 814 brought a time of trouble under his 
son, Ludwig the Pious, a weak well-meaning personage. The 
empire was divided, and civil war occurred between his sons. After 
Ludwig's death in 840, his sons Ludwig and Charles the Bald 
combined against their brother Lothar in an alliance remarkable 
for the fact that the oath was taken by Charles and his soldiers 
in the earliest specimen now extant of the French language, a 
mingling of the Gaulish or Celtic, Latin, and German. In 843 
the Treaty of Verdun divided the empire amongst the three 
brothers. Lothar had the imperial crown, with the Netherlands, 
left bank of the Rhine, north Italy, Burgundy, and Provence. 
Ludwig took Germany east of the Rhine, except Friesland, and 
the dioceses of Mainz, Worms, and Speier on the left (west) bank 
of the river. Charles had as his share the western part of the 
Frankish lands — Neustria, Aquitania, the north of Burgundy, 
and the Spanish Mark or border-land. The kingdom of Ludwig, 
embracing the eastern part of the empire of Karl the Great, had 



\ rthcrn Europe and France 215 

ienl in the majority, and th< I I Franks called 

tht-ir Ian <>r the language of th . the mo 

nam Dutch " in the narrow modem 

the Bald mostly sj 

Latin <>r 
We thus have the beginnii ■ ition 

hc .->iiall find that they 
1 fur a time unit 



I', H 'k II. 

1KI-A VERDUN TO CRUSADE PERIOD 

. 

I I t nce ; th e Norm a n 

d by 
British 
the inhi 

Scandinavia, comj 

till a I • 

s, and have left on 

their moral, martial, and intellectual power, 
linavian peninsula the northern I 

: the hill 



216 A History of the World 

urged to this career by the land-system which made a family estate 
an indivisible possession, and so they spent the summer seeking 
plunder on the seas and coasts. For this they launched their stout, 
seaworthy, roomy long-ships, or ships of war, with an upreared 
dragon for a figure-head, propelled by oars and by sails that were 
often of gay colours, or striped with cloth of red and white and 
blue. The steering could be ruled only by sun and stars, or by the 
flight of ravens which they carried and let loose as guides to the 
nearest land. The flag of these terrible sea-rovers bore a black raven 
on a blood-red ground, and the time came when the sight of it was 
hated and dreaded on every shore from the North Sea to the Levant. 
Their religion was a powerful aid to natural love of fighting, in hold- 
ing forth a hell of cold and darkness for those who died of sickness 
or old age, and a heaven where conflict passed the time from sunrise 
till the hour came for return to feast in the Valhalla or great hall. 
This was the lot reserved for all warriors who fell in action. 

A great impulse was given to the career of foreign conquest 
when the smaller chiefs at home began to fall under the sway of 
the more powerful, and separate kingdoms were created under 
strong rulers. The free landowners did not choose to sink to the 
position of feudal vassals, and many of them sought possessions 
in foreign lands as the gift of their own swords. Before the end 
of the 8th century there were Norsemen settled in the Faroe 
Islands and the Orkneys, and Iceland was discovered and colonised 
before the close of the 9th century. Leaving for the moment the 
work done by the Northmen in the British Isles and France, we 
find them, in their light-draught ships, passing far up the rivers 
in the valleys of the Elbe and Rhine, with force sufficient to capture 
and sack seaport towns and inland cities, as well as to plunder 
abbeys and churches of their gold and silver plate and vestments 
of valuable cloth, for which a ready market was found at regular 
trading-places on the Baltic and the North Sea coasts, where 
merchants from Italy and Flanders and the East purchased slaves 
and precious metals and stones from their captors. The period 
until the middle of the 9th century was rather one of plunder and 
adventure, extending in succession to the western coasts of France 
and the northern coast of Spain ; then to fighting with the Moors 
in Andalusia, and in 859 and 860 to ravages in Majorca and 
Mauretania, the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and western Italy. 
The last half of the 9th and the 10th and nth centuries found 
Norsemen, apart from their achievements in France and England, 



I Normans in I . 217 

ilrns in Russia ; threatenin I .ntinople from the 

wn the 1 mieper : twi< 

Lai ; and even 
bunching <>n the Caspian, f M ..\<!lers on 

the coast. It to dwell nil the martial renown which 

after they ha<l 

tuthern Italy, became <luk 
n the llth century, fighting brilliantly there and in S 
ns an<l 1 '.<! winnii ret the ti 

ie empen Their prowess will 

in the < . in which One adventurous warrmr of 

ruler of Antioch, and the iau. 

the h< • 'i em, u.>s the 

: the Holy Sepulchre from the 
in. 

is that of the western Frank kii 
in the last half of the 9th century, ami the onl) moment 

. and terrible i f i Northmen, 

md other t- >\\ n-^, and the I. 
char.. 1 fiefs, pi j In th 

the death of ' me brid 1 in 

in the union of the whole empire under Karl the Fat of 
ed three years later for I. lice, 

f'»r the retreat of the Northmen in 

i r to beo ime the foun 

m the north of the country where they had ti 

I the 

• 

' inland. 

f their I 

■ \\ alker, 

tan had I 

'• 

r an mi 

the 

S 



2 1 8 A History of the World 

extensive coast. In return for this permanent possession of territory, 
to be held in fief, or on feudal tenure, from Charles, Rollo became 
a Christian, baptised as " Robert," and thus was founded the Duchy 
of Normandy. Before his death in 927, the Norman influence had 
been spread over adjacent territory in Brittany and Maine, fresh 
lands had been acquired by grant from the suzerain, and the people 
were firmly settled in their new country. 

The Normans, as these people may now be called, showed an 
unrivalled capacity for adopting and improving upon the civilisation 
of the country and age in which they lived. With the speech, 
usages, and faith of those whom they had subdued, they acquired 
all the knowledge and culture of western Europe. They improved 
the rude early French into the most refined tongue of the age, 
the " Norman-French," adapted for high service in legislation, 
poetry, and romance. Good taste, splendour, and luxury appeared in 
their diet, their manners, and apparel, and the heathen rovers of the 
North Sea and the Channel became a nation of civilised people, 
almost fanatics in their religion, skilled in handicrafts, trade, arts, 
and letters, the builders of the noble castles and cathedrals which are 
among the glories of mediaeval architecture. The one thing which 
the Normans did not change or lay aside was their dauntless 
valour. The gentlemen and nobles of Normandy overlaid its 
original ferocity with the chivalrous spirit that made them the 
foremost knights of Christendom in the battle-field and the 
tournament. Their great improvement in the art of war was the 
employment of the heavy cavalry, horse and man alike protected 
by armour, the rider using a sword and a long heavy spear or lance. 

One or two of the successors of Rollo in the Duchy were at 
war with the Frank or French kings following Charles the Simple, 
and there were also conflicts between the East (or German) and the 
West (or French) Franks. The direct line of Karl the Great became 
extinct in 987 on the death of the feeble Ludwig V., and the history 
of France is held to begin with the Capetian dynasty (987-1328, 
in the direct line) in the person of Hugh Capet, son of Hugh of 
Paris, duke of France. Hugh Capet, king of France (987-996), was, 
however, only the chief among a number of great feudal lords, the 
dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, the counts 
of Flanders, Champagne, and other territories. His own little realm 
extended from the Somme to the Loire, with Paris as the capital, 
having Champagne on the east and Normandy and Anjou on the 
west. Under his successors, for over a century, the power of the 



The Danes in England 219 

king of France, surrounded by territories whose feudal rulers sur- 
passed him in military resources, remained a shadowy thing. The 
reign of Philip I. (1060-1108) has no distinction of its own, but 
the period included two important events soon to be dealt with — 
the Norman conquest of England and the first of the Crusades. 

The Danes had begun to trouble England before the days of 
Egbert, having made in 787 their first recorded attack by landing 
on the coast of Wessex. The pagan rovers hated the English, akin 
to them as they were in blood and language, for their change of 
religion. Until after the middle of the 9th century, these assail- 
ants only made desultory ravages, some of a very serious kind, 
as the sacking of London and Canterbury in 851. Then began 
a period of settlement and conquest in various parts of the country, 
a time when it was well for England that Egbert's successors were 
energetic men, who made a stout fight against the invaders, and 
kept the country from being overwhelmed. It was in 855 that a 
party of Danes, for the first time, passed the winter in the land, 
maintaining themselves in a fortified position of the Isle of Sheppey, 
on the north of Kent. Under Ethelred I. (866-871), much of 
Northumbria was overrun, and a large part of East Anglia was 
conquered in 870, by a body of Danes who had come down from 
the north, and plundered and burnt the rich abbeys of Peterborough, 
Croyland, and Ely in the fen-country. Edmund, king of East 
Anglia, ranking as a martyr and saint, shot to death with arrows 
as he was when he refused to give up his faith, has left his name in 
the place of his interment, Bury St. Edmunds, or St. Edmund's 
town. Mercia was then forced to become tributary, and the 
invaders were masters of the whole of England north of the Thames. 
A turn of the tide came when, in 871, they moved on Wessex, and, 
pushing their way up the Thames to Reading, reached the Vale 
of White Horse in the north-west of Berkshire. The district has 
iis name from the most famous of the many huge figures of horses, 
on hillsides, chiefly found in Wiltshire, formed by removing the 
turf so as to show the chalk beneath. The one which traditionally 
commemorates the victory won by the king and his younger brother 
Alfred at Aescesdun, or Ash-tree Hill, a spot not clearly known, 
is over 350 feet in length, and 120 feet in height from ear to heel, 
cut out on a slope about two miles due south of Uffington. The 
Danes, after a severe conflict, were defeated and driven back to 
the river, but the arrival of reinforcements up the Thames made 
them stronger than before, and Ethelred fell in a later action. 



220 A History of the World 

It was at this critical time that the rule of Wessex was taken 
up by one of the best sovereigns that ever reigned, one whose 
devotion to duty has never been equalled in our annals save by the 
great lady, his lineal descendant, who was Queen of England a 
thousand years later. It is needless, for British readers, to dwell on 
the noble career of the man born at Wantage, in Berkshire, in 849, 
who was king of Wessex for 30 years (871-901). We all know his 
retreat in 878, before Guthorm or Guthrum, Danish king of East 
Anglia, to a refuge in the Somerset marshes at the Isle of Athelney ; 
his gathering of forces, and his victory at Ethandun, another 
uncertain spot, perhaps in Wiltshire, over Guthrum and his men. 
The spirit of a true statesman was shown in the victor's compromise 
with the foe, embodied in the Treaty (or Peace) of Wedmore, 
in Somerset, a few miles west of Wells. The wise man knew that 
he could not drive the Danes from the land, and he resolved to 
turn gallant foes into a new and friendly element of the nation. 
The Danish king and his men were baptised as Christians, and by 
this and a later treaty Alfred kept Wessex, Sussex, and Kent, with 
London and the western half of Mercia, while the Danes possessed 
East Anglia, the eastern half of Mercia, and Northumbria to the 
Tees. The Northmen had thus the larger half of England, called 
the Danelagh, or Danes' community, until the Norman conquest, 
because it was ruled by Danish customs and codes. From 880 to 893 
Wessex was, for the most part, at peace. An invasion from Normandy 
under a brave leader named Hasting, who landed in Kent, gave 
Alfred a contest of four years (893-897), by sea and land, against 
these new enemies, and the Danes of Northumbria and East Anglia. 
At last he was successful, and further invasion was prevented by the 
creation of a powerful fleet of ships, far superior to the Danish in 
size, stability, and speed, and manned by crews well trained in all 
the work of naval warfare. The roving squadrons were kept at bay, 
and pirates who were taken were promptly hanged. 

The work of Alfred in restoring and improving the civilisation of 
his portion of England is beyond praise. " Without haste, without 
rest," he was an able administrator ; a lawgiver who compiled from 
the old codes of Ina of Wessex, Offa of Mercia, and Ethelbert of 
Kent ; a restorer of ruined towns, churches, and abbeys, of justice 
and commerce, of literature and learning. He created a new militia 
and the first English navy ; he was the spiritual and intellectual 
leader of his people. His many-sided character and culture are 
seen in his literary work ; his skill and delight in the chase ; his 



Alfred the Great 221 

love of ballad, anecdote, and merry tale ; his zeal as a builder, his 
mechanical ingenuity, his invention for measuring time, his planning 
of a new type of battleship. It was the genius and the incessant toil 
of this most admirable and lovable of Englishmen that made the grand 
empire of Queen Victoria possible, by saving his little England from 
foreign domination, raising her in the scale of nations, and maintaining 
her in the fellowship of Christian peoples. It is true that, three 
generations after his death, the people were overcome for a time by 
the successors of the Danes whom he had mastered, and that," in 
two generations more, the land was subdued again by Northmen. 
None the less had Alfred, in the days when he delivered Wessex 
from the Dane, rescued an England for the glories of the future. 
The indomitable courage, the religious endurance, the heart and 
hope of this great Christian hero, tested in every kind of trial, were 
a most precious bequest to the crown and to the nation, a model of 
our national character at its best, as combining, in the achievements 
of our race, the world of thought and the world of action " Duty 
before all " was and is the motto of the best of Englishmen, never 
more nobly illustrated than in the vivid and charming personality of 
Alfred, bright and frank in feature and expression ; dignified in form 
and demeanour; kindly, humorous, truthful, simple, in all points 
worthy of what he won, the lasting affection and esteem of posterity. 
Alfred was succeeded by his son called Edward the Elder, as the 
first king of that name, who reigned from 901 to 925. Under him 
and his able and energetic sister Ethelflaed, called the " Lady of 
the Mercians," as being the widow of the Ealdorman of West Mercia, 
the English cause was well maintained against the Danes by the 
building of fortresses along the border, and the annexation of East 
Mercia in the capture of the " Five Boroughs," Lincoln, Stamford, 
Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham. The subjugation of East Anglia 
and Essex made Edward master, before his death, of all the centre 
of the country as far as the Humber. The next king, Athelstan, 
(925-940), son of Edward, ruled with ability and strength, breaking 
up a powerful league of Welsh, Scots, and Danes, in 937, in a battle 
at Brcnanburh, an unknown site on the coast of Northumbria. His 
brother, Edmund the Elder (940-946), was energetic in warfare, 
and, after crushing a revolt in the Danish portion of the land, 
he conquered Cumberland from its Celtic possessors, and gave 
it over to Malcolm of Scotland, to be held by him on the terms 
of alliance against the Danes. At this period we have, under 
Edmund, Edred, brother of Edmund, and Edgar (959-975), the 



222 A History of the World 

famous Dunstan as chief minister in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. 
This accomplished man, skilful in all the intellectual and manual 
arts of his day — carving, metal-work, music, painting, Latin — 
rose from the position of abbot of the Benedictine house at 
Glastonbury to that of archbishop of Canterbury in 959. He 
was an active restorer of monastic houses and discipline, and was 
devoted to church-work from the time of his retirement from 
civil affairs in 978 until his death, ten years later, at the seat of 
his ecclesiastical authority. In 954 the Danes of Northumbria were 
overcome by Edred, and the country from the Channel to the Firth 
of Forth was thus under one ruler. The surrender, to the Scottish 
king, of the land called Lothian, between the Forth and the Cheviot 
Hills, brought England to the limits which now exist, except as* 
regards Cumberland, which was taken from the Scots under William 
Rums, and gradually settled by English in place of Welshmen. 
During the 10th century the royal power increased through the 
king's leadership of a regular military force against the Danes. The 
office was subject to election by the Witan, or assembly of nobles, 
the new king being, however, chosen from the kinsmen of the late 
monarch, with preference for an eldest son, unless he were manifestly 
unfit. The transition from this method of choice to the hereditary 
kingship was easy. It was Athelstan who first styled himself 
"King of the English." The division of the country into shires 
belongs to this period, the territory of a county being that of one of 
the old smaller kingdoms, as in Kent, Essex, Middlesex, and Sussex, 
or a district connected with some important town. The system 
of local government still in full force existed in the shire-moot 
("meeting") or county-court, with the ealdorman, the chief military 
and civil shire -official, and the bishop as presidents. There business 
was transacted, and law was dispensed, both in civil and criminal 
affairs, by the shire landowners, in many matters now managed by 
County Councils and by the justices at Quarter-Sessions. We have 
here an important difference between the insular and the continental 
systems. The Roman law, so prominent in judicial business among 
foreign European nations, has little sway in this country, south of 
the Tweed, and the " common law " of England is still, to a large 
extent, that of our Teutonic ancestors. 

The Danes or Northmen who had, by conquest and agreement, 
settled in England, soon became incorporated with the English 
clement by community of interest and intermarriage, and by adoption 
of the Christian faith. Abundant local marks of Danish presence 



I Danes in England 

• 

:ilt> llm< 
In the n 
t the I 
and th< 

1 ; with '' v. .1 bi hill, 

• ur in Yorkshire ;m<! 
I 
the num how the 

. '. 
District, .mil in 
i 
nent in und, 

•, in tin , in the 

I in the f < In 

: the 
. be little doubt that " 

upon the nation, we 

le and t: 
f fi 
N irthmen, the 

■ 

r. 11 the 

lem | In 

I 

: 

I, m icoa, ■ 

l 

■ 
I 



224 A History of the World 

certain brave fighters of a later date under a man named Cromwell, 
was bestowed for the courage displayed in the many conflicts of his 
brief career as the chosen representative of the English party. For 
nearly 30 years the country was under Danish kings. Cnut 
(1016-1035) was a powerful monarch, as ruler of Denmark, Norway, 
and England, and a man of ability and vigour. His first political 
act was the division of the country into four provinces or govern- 
ments called earldoms — the Danish word jarl representing the 
English "ealdorman." He showed wisdom like that of Alfred 
in not pressing too far a victor's rights. Wessex was placed under 
Earl Godwin, an Englishman, Mercia under Earl Leofwine, also an 
Englishman. Northumbria and East Anglia were assigned to the 
Danish earls Eric and Thurkill. Cnut, already a Christian by 
profession, favoured the clergy and the monks, and was careful 
to enforce payment of " Peter's pence " and other dues to the Pope. 
He ruled the country with firmness and justice, maintaining a peace 
that was highly beneficial after past troubles. His two sons and 
successors, Harold I. and Harthacnut, who were half-brothers, are 
not worthy of more than mention. The latter, a drunken ruffian, 
died in 1042 after an orgie at a marriage-feast in Lambeth, where 
the bride was daughter of one of his chief thanes, Osgod Clapa, a 
landowner whose name probably survives in the suburb of London 
called Clapham, known now so widely from its railway-junction. 

On his death the old line of English kings was restored in the 
person of Edward the Confessor, so surnamed from his devotion to 
the Church and the faith. He was the second son of Ethelred and 
Emma, daughter of a duke of Normandy. His education at the 
Norman court made Norman influence, for the first time, strong in 
England, after his accession. High posts in ecclesiastical and civil 
affairs were held by Normans, and strong stone castles began to 
arise. The English party, led by Earl Godwin of Wessex, whose 
daughter Edith was queen, and at first supported by the earls of 
Northumbria and Mercia, strongly opposed the Normans, whose 
speech had now become the official language at court. The wealth 
and power of Godwin, whose sway extended also over Sussex and 
Kent, and of his sons Sweyn and Harold, governing part of Mercia, 
and East Anglia and Essex, were together far greater than King 
Edward's, and the great earl was, to a large extent, master of the 
realm. A quarrel, causing Godwin's exile in 105 1, ended with his 
triumphant return, with a powerful force of ships and men, in the 
following year. A strong popular feeling in his favour was shown. 



The Norman Conquest 

mdon, and found the forces of the earl's ; 
mi up in ball >und where the " now 

a ith the ■ 
on which 
with ' • inland. The king was in a help 

unl the r . !>y the W 

[lowed by the hasty flight <>f the Norman 
md laym< n ol Go Iwin in i 

left the l " in the bands of Harold, now earl of 

lli> ambition was equal to that of his father, and he was 
ility and tact. 1 ' rest of I n he 

the real ruler nd, and he gained military fame in i 

l>v his sen I a powerful chief in N 

rmed, .m event followed by Ins deposition 
and death at the hands of his <>\wi people. Edward the Conf< 
I in January, 1066, and was buried in a new church called the 
r, built by himself <>n the site of the pi bey, 

nal work. 
I ril d, a noble specimen <>( an Englishman - 

a h: iptain in -.ilful 

. spirit brought to him an 
'Ur unique in our by the Witan, he 

i that ever ruled in England, 
ry heir w. Ethel nj " Pi in< e i the 

side. We must 
Normandy, men 

■r. He 

; turbulent nobles. w 

I 
luchj I 

all men ol w ith ii 

with .1 \ 



226 A History of the World 

revenge. As a strategist and tactician he was of a high class, and 
the ability of his statesmanship in very difficult positions is beyond 
dispute. This born ruler of men had to fight against his French 
neighbours in 1054, and again showed what was in him. One 
division of the powerful army was destroyed by surprise at the town 
of Mortemer ; the other was glad to be allowed to withdraw. In 
1058 he triumphed over another French host at Varaville. Two 
years later, Maine and Brittany came, almost without a struggle, 
into his possession. His indomitable will in conquering difficulties 
had now made him one of the foremost men in Europe, ruling a 
loyal, prosperous, well-ordered state, the envy of its neighbours. 
Tillage and trade were protected and encouraged. The best men 
were appointed to high positions in the Church, and under Lanfranc 
of Pavia the school at the Abbey of Bee became the most famous 
in Christendom. This extraordinary man, William of Normandy, 
was in private life a good husband, brother, and father, in a cruel 
and profligate age. 

The duke had visited Edward the Confessor in 105 1, during the 
exile of Godwin, and, seeing a country well worth the winning, he 
had conceived the idea of conquest at a future day. We shall 
not here go into the vexed question of his claims, based upon 
an alleged promise of Edward, an alleged oath of Harold, and 
a supposed right through his wife, the good Matilda of Flanders. 
The rightful heir, as has been shown, was Edgar the yEtheling, 
a direct descendant, in the male line, of Alfred and Egbert. Nor 
need we linger over the battle, important as were its long-lasting 
consequences, fought out on both sides with the utmost valour 
at Senlac, eight miles inland, northeast from Pevensey Bay, on 
October 14th, 1066. This " Battle of Hastings," as it is usually 
called, gave William of Normandy in the end the possession of 
England, through the defeat and death of the gallant Harold, 
who had only just returned from defeating, at Stamford Bridge, in 
Yorkshire, a formidable invasion under his own banished brother 
Tostig and Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. The old name 
of Senlac was changed, through the foundation of an abbey by 
William on the ground where Harold and the standards had been 
posted on the great decisive day, the religious house being called 
L'Abbaye de la Bataille, whence Battle Abbey and the modern 
little town Battle. We may here point out that the title 
" Conqueror," given to the successful duke of Normandy, does 
not necessarily imply the forcible subjection of a people. It mean 



The Norman Conquest 227 

simply " one who acquires," by bequest or by purchase, or in any way 
which was not regular inheritance. It is true that subsequent 
revolts, overcome by William with much effort and skill, made 
him "Conqueror" in the popular sense, but as he maintained 
his right to the crown of England by Edward's gift, and on other 
grounds, he was its "conqueror" in a strictly legal sense, according 
to his view. We here leave him and turn to other parts of the 
British Isles. 

As regards Scotland, we have seen that the kingdom began, 
in a sense, under Kenneth MacAlpin, who died in 860. The 
east and west coasts were ravaged by the ruthless Danes at this 
period, and king after king was slain in conflict with them. The 
realm was extended, in the 10th century, by the addition of 
Edinburgh, and civil warfare ended in Malcolm II. 's becoming 
king in 1005. This monarch invaded Northumberland in 1018, 
and a victory at Carham on the Tweed brought the cession 
of Lothian, followed by the incorporation of Strathclyde, and 
the establishment of a permanent frontier on the south. After 
warfare between various claimants, Malcolm III., surnamed 
"Canmore" (Oreathead), became king in 1057, and the old Celtic 
monarchy ended. He was an Anglo-Dane on his mother's side, 
and passed his youth at the court of Edward the Confessor. 
English influence became great in Scotland after the Norman 
Conquest, as Malcolm married, in 1069, Margaret,, sister of Edgar 
.Etheling. Many English nobles tcok refuge at his court, and 
the queen, an excellent woman, was very serviceable, in the way 
of moral and mental improvement, to the king, court, and people. 

We have seen something of the ravages of the Northmen or 
Danes in Ireland. In their presence, after they made permanent 
settlements, and amid the constant tribal wars, all political 
development was prevented, learning vanished, and the Church 
became powerless for good. In the 10th century some deliver- 
ance from Danish oppression came with Malachy, the head of the 
O'Neills, the leader celebrated by Moore as "wearing the collar 
of gold which he won from the proud invader,' and in the person 
of the famous Brian Boroimhe, or Brian Boru. This chieftain, 
aiming at supreme power, against the Danes on the one hand and 
the O'Neills on the other, cleared Munster of the Northmen in 
968, capturing Limerick and putting the armed men to death, with 
the flight or enslavement of all others. Brian then overran 
Leinster and Connaught, and had the better of Malachy of Meath, 



228 A History of the World 

who had won fame by his defeat of the Danes at Tara, in Meath, 
where his stronghold was, the place familiar to us from Moore's 
lines on 

" The harp that once through Tara's halls 
The soul oi music shed." 

In a sense, " Brian of the Tribute " was now king of Ireland, 
as a suzerain over vassal chiefs, without interference in local 
government. He won many victories over the Danes, and 
forced them to remain quiet ; and on one occasion he entered 
Dublin, and carried off hostages and treasure. For 12 years 
from 1002 Ireland enjoyed peace. The Danes of the coast-towns 
were becoming traders instead of robbers ; the monasteries were 
being rebuilt, and the tribal warfare was, in many quarters, exchanged 
for the making of roads, bridges, and other works of use in civilised 
life. In 10 1 4 more trouble came on the hapless country, and 
chaos ensued for a century and a half. Brian was growing old, 
and the work which he had effected was suddenly undone. The 
Danes of Leinster rebelled, and obtained help in great forces 
sent by their kinsmen from Northumbria, the Orkneys, the Isle 
of Man, and other quarters, headed by Sigurd, can of Orkney, 
and a viking named Brodar. Brian took the field with the men 
of Munster, Meath, and Connaught, with his five sons and old 
Malachy fighting under his banner, and on Good Friday the enemy 
were met on the shore at Clontarf, between Dublin and Howth 
Head. A long day's battle between the armies ended in the 
utter defeat of the Danes, with the death of Sigurd and other 
leaders. Old king Brian, unequal to the fatigue of fighting, had 
left the command to his eldest son, and remained during the 
conflict at prayer in his tent, pitched near the edge of the woods 
which then covered all the rising ground north of Dublin. As 
the Northmen fled at evening-tide, some to their ships, some to 
the town, and others to the open country west of Dublin, a party 
of Brodar's men, with their leader, came near the tent, and one of 
them pointed to the kneeling man, with long white beard, as the 
king. " 'Tis but a monk, a shaveling," cried Brodar. " It is 
Brian himself," was the answer, and with that the man rushed 
in, to receive a blow across his legs from the sword of the half-risen 
Brian. A battle-axe then clove the king's head to the chin, and 
his body, thus found by his victorious subjects, was conveyed 
to Armagh for burial. This grievous misfortune for Ireland 



Norway and Sweden 229 

rendered the country a prey to utter anarchy, in which we must 
leave it until the days of Anglo-Norman invasion. 

Until near the 9th century we have no trustworthy history 
of Scandinavia. When the Jutes and Angles migrated to Britain, 
it seems that Danes from Zealand, P'iinen, and other islands took 
their place in the peninsula. A king of Jutland, at war with 
Karl the Great, built a line of forts (Dannevirk) across the 
isthmus. Gorm, king of Denmark at the end of the 9th century, 
was a bitter opponent of Christianity. His persecutions were 
stopped by Henry I. of Germany, and his death in 936 gave 
fresh vigour to the spread of the faith. Harold Blaatand (Blue- 
tooth) then ruled until 985, and was succeeded by Svend or Sweyn, 
and by Cnut the Great (10 14-1035), whom we have met in 
English history. Under him Christianity became the settled faith. 
On his death Denmark was separated from Norway, and in 1047 
his nephew Svend or Sweyn became king and began a line of 
princes that continued for four centuries. There were wars with 
Norway and with the Wends, a branch of the Slavs on the southern 
coast of the Baltic. Sweden, early in the 9th century, had Chris- 
tianity preached by Ansgar of Picardy, but the Swedes, fanatical 
heathens, who treated the countries around the Baltic as their 
kinsmen of Norway and Denmark treated the people on the 
shores of the North Sea and the Channel, were not fully converted 
until three centuries later, though the Goths of the south of the 
country (Gothland) had long been professed Christians. Some 
Swedish bands settled around Novgorod, subdued the Slavs in that 
quarter, and laid a foundation for the future Russia. 

The early history of Norway shows us a country divided among 

many petty kings, with the usual distracted state of affairs, until 

the 9th century. Then the famous Harold Haarfager (Fairhair), 

who ruled from 863 to 930, in 12 years' warfare made a solid realm 

and introduced the feudal system. His sway extended as far 

north as Trondhjem, where he established his seat of government. 

It was his firm, treatment of the smaller kings and his repression 

of freebooting which drove so many Norsemen to emigrate to 

the Faroe Isles, the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, the Isle 

of Man, and Ireland. From those marine fastnesses they sailed 

back to their own land, and so plundered the coast-territories 

given by Harold to other jarls or great vikings that the king 

went forth and drove them from the Orkneys and Hebrides to 

Iceland, and appointed earls over the conquered island-groups. 
16 



230 A History of the World 

At the court of this long-lived monarch the skalds or improvising 
poets, singing the praises of living warriors or their ancestors, were 
held in honour. Harold's death was followed by many years of 
conflict between his sons and other claimants. In 996 Olaf 
Trvggveson, a descendant of Harold, and a man of renown in 
England and elsewhere as a viking, became ruler, and died fighting 
in a d. 1000, against a host of Norwegian and Danish foes off the 
south Baltic coast. It was in these days that Northmen discovered, 
beyond the Atlantic, Greenland and Vinland (afterwards " New 
England "), and made settlements which endured for some years and 
then disappeared and were forgotten. Olaf II. (1015-1030) reigned 
well over a united Norway, and under him Christianity was established. 
He perished in battle against Cnut (Canute) near Trondhjem. 
Harold Hardraada was killed in 1066, as we have seen, fighting 
against Harold II. of England at Stamford Bridge. This last 
monarch of the period with which we are dealing had been a 
member of the famous Varangian Guard at Constantinople, composed 
of Norman warriors and Slav adventurers who took service under the 
Greek emperors in that period, and he had fought against the 
Saracens in Sicily. 

Chapter II. — The German Empire and the Papacy (843-1122); 
the Moors and Christians in Spain ; the Byzantine Empire ; 
the Rise of the Italian Republics. 

A time of trouble and confusion, both in Germany and Italy, followed 
the breaking-up, in 888, of the restored monarchy of Karl the Great. 
In both regions there was warfare with Norsemen and with the 
fierce Hungarian bands from the Caspian steppes, while Italy had 
also to contend with Saracen assailants of her coasts, and Germany 
with wild Wends (Slavs) and the Czechs, also of Slav race, in 
Bohemia. Each German provincial ruler — count, margraf, abbot, 
bishop — became semi-independent, secure in his own castle, a 
personal instead of.a territorial authority, and the evil of private war 
among these nobles arose and was long a curse to the land. Italy 
was desolated by the feuds of its petty princes, fighting for territory 
in north and south, and the Papacy, early in the 10th century, sank 
to its lowest point in a succession of wicked Popes, raised to power 
as the lovers and sons of two infamous women, Theodora and 
Marozia. At last, in Henry I., called " the Fowler " from his love of 
falconry, the first luler of the Saxon line, we have the real founder of 



The German Empire and the Papaq 1122 

■ ; I 
. 
>und him. Hungarian 
ind Bavari 1 
• 
:ul the middh i their v. 

. I the better to repel I lungarian 

I lis monarch ha I the 

hurgl in the n< rns which he built, and 

in the old < in I I 

the due administration of justice in thes and 

: all public meetings and i in towns and 

1 he new < la->> of traders which was thu 

!' the kings against rebelliou 
II Oil [.) ted km^ by the nobles, and crowni 

en (Aix-la < Ihapel \6, is .1 man e in 

in and Italian history. II wa ild when lu- 

monan hy, and by hi> wis • Jinn 
rnment, and especially through his revival of the " nan 

he well earned his title of "the Great" in 1 

n. The II and 

■ 
d Wend nission. The 1 in urn- 

1 mt picture of hi^ knightly 
and virtue in a I 1 turbulent and 

.tiiul wid Kid, had been imprisoned in a loath 

• the north. 

^ ill It of 

. in 1 her 

into 

• • n of 

1 of a vassal. 1 

■ 

■ 

in t: 

■ Hcnccl 



232 A History of the World 

crowns, attaching by far the greater importance to the imperial 
title, as giving them a stronger hold over the subjects of their mere 
feudal kingship in Germany. The new emperor did not delay the 
exercise of his power. The Pope turned against him, and was 
deposed, being replaced by a Pope, Leo VIII. , of Otto's choice. This 
connection of Germany with the empire had important effects in 
creating amongst Germans a proud sense of unity and nationality. 
For the emperors themselves the result was the reverse of 
beneficial. They lost most of their real power as German kings 
through interference, as emperors, in foreign struggles in which 
Germany had no interests at stake, and during their absence the 
great feudal nobles became almost independent of their suzerain. 
It was thus the lot of Germany to consist for centuries of many 
small independent states, instead of their being welded into strong 
compact monarchies like those of England and France. Such were 
some of the chief political issues of the re-establishment of this 
" Holy Roman Empire." 

The feelings and notions of the age embraced the two great ideas 
of a universal religion and a universal monarchy, representing at 
once the Church and the empire of the Caesars. The Papal chair 
was imperial as regarded the souls of men ; the Emperor's throne, 
filled by the vicar of God in temporal matters, represented the 
authority needed to maintain peace in the world, and to compel, 
from the laity, obedience to the priesthood. The Church and the 
Empire were thus regarded as one and the same thing, in two aspects. 
As divine and eternal, its head was the Pope ; as human and temporal, 
its chief was the Emperor. There could be no opposition between 
two earthly servants of the same heavenly Master, and thus had arisen, 
it was fondly hoped, a perfect union of Church and State. On 
this subject we may here take a swift forward glance through over eight 
centuries of mediaeval and modern time. The scheme of the "Holy 
Roman Empire " was indeed noble, altogether stately and sym- 
metrical in its proportions. It had, however, like many other 
schemes, political and religious, one serious defect — it would not 
work. The Pope, as ecclesiastical partner, encroached on the 
secular domain, and claimed a right of interference which emperors 
would not brook. The emperor insisted on the right of approving 
elections to the Papacy, and of investing bishops and abbots with 
their temporal possessions. The emperor's claim to supremacy over 
other European sovereigns was disallowed by the rulers of rising 
states, and his authority within the limits of his German kingship 



! I id the Papacy i i : : ; 

I wits 

ilth and i i bandit • 

I ihe tyra 

of l>oth empt : 1 he i ;>lit up th< 

tual authority. In t!i 

the 
[n • entury t : 

• 

Great 'it to 

the front a people who item Church, the 

re, with a bit) h had no 

ribe the " Holy Roman Empire 
well nami that it was "not Holy, nan, 

in the 19th century, 
t into ti.' 
by t! 

1 

f tlu- land in the 

]'■:> n and 

■ I in import I the tr.. 

the line 

-ful 

ind Hun 

I 

■ 



234 A History of the World 

the empire. His son and successor (by election), Henry IV. 
(1056- 1 106), was but six years old, and during a long minority the 
princes regained much of their former influence. The passionate 
young king, of weak character, assumed power in 1065, and had 
at first much trouble with Saxon rebels whom he stirred up by 
his tyranny. It was then his lot to come into conflict with one 
of the greatest of all the Popes, a man who is the symbol of 
spiritual, combined with temporal, claims at their highest. 

The court of Rome had long been under the control of Arch- 
deacon Hildebrand, of Italian birth and French education, austere 
in life, of great eloquence, and the firmest will. He has been well 
described as the possessor of " that rarest and grandest of gifts, 
an intellectual courage and power of imaginative belief which, when 
it has convinced itself of aught, accepts it fully with all its con- 
sequences, and shrinks not from acting at once upon it." That 
of which Hildebrand had convinced himself was that to the Pope, 
as God's vicar, all mankind are subject and all rulers responsible, 
and that he, the giver of the crown, may also excommunicate and 
depose. Much had been done, through Hildebrand's influence, 
under Pope Nicholas II. (1058-1061), to advance ecclesiastical 
power. A change was made in the mode of electing the supreme 
pontiff, and the choice rested with the cardinals alone, instead 
of depending in a measure on the votes of the clergy and people of 
Rome. Cardinal Hildebrand, as he had become, was elected to the 
Papal chair in 1073 as Gregory VII., and' he at once undertook to 
carry out his theocratic ideas of vesting all the ecclesiastical power 
in the Pope, and making the Church quite independent of the 
temporal power. He sought at once the welfare of the Church and 
the reform of society in remedying what he viewed as the great evil 
of the day — the close connection of ecclesiastics with secular affairs, 
especially in Germany and northern Italy. The higher clergy had 
become great feudal proprietors, dependent upon the sovereign for 
investiture, or the act of giving possession of a manor, office, or 
benefice. In the case of bishops, abbots, and other dignitaries 
of the Church, the form of investiture consisted in the delivery 
of a pastoral staff — the crosier — and the placing of a ring upon the 
finger. It was regarded as an indignity for the Church that a 
layman, the suzerain, should thus commit to an ecclesiastic the 
spiritual care of souls, and as involving or inducing the crime 
of simony, or the presentation of a person to a benefice in return 
for money. 



The German Empire and the Papacy (843-1122) 235 

In 1075 Gregory VII. therefore, by a "bull," condemned the 
practice of lay-investiture, under penalty of excommunication. He 
also insisted upon celibacy for all ecclesiastics, a measure which was 
strongly resisted by the secular or non-monastic clergy, who had 
hitherto had much freedom in this respect. As regards his hostility 
to lay-investiture, it is clear that government in Germany would have 
become impossible if the bishops and abbots, who held half the land 
and wealth of the empire, were removed from the control of the 
monarch to that of the Pope. Henry IV. promptly defied Gregory, 
and in 1076 he was not only excommunicated, but, in accordance 
with German law, suspended by the Diet of " Princes of the Empire " 
from his kingly office. A sentence of deposition was before him, 
and the attitude of many of his subjects, especially the Saxons, 
was such that he was forced to submit. Then came the famous 
and proverbial visit to Canossa, a castle of northern Italy, in the 
hills south of Parma. The mightiest prince of Europe, titular lord 
of the world, crossed the Alps in the depth of winter, accompanied 
by his wife Bertha, his infant son, and one attendant, and, in the 
garb of a penitent, bare-headed, bare-footed in the snow, he waited 
three whole days (January 25-28, 1077) in the castle-court, before he 
was admitted to the Pontiff's presence to receive absolution. The 
imperial authority never recovered from this blow. The cities of 
Lombardy, in later days, sought Papal sanction for their league 
against imperial aggression, and the German princes had always 
a weapon at hand against their chief. Henry IV., however, soon 
made a good show of rallying from his humiliation, which was, on 
his part, only a pretended submission to serve a momentary purpose. 
In 1080 a rival king in Germany, elected by the malcontents, was 
defeated and mortally wounded in battle, and Henry, again ex- 
communicated, declared the deposition of the Pope, marched into 
Italy, and captured Rome in 1084, after a three-years' siege. Gregory, 
shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, was just saved from being 
made prisoner by the arrival of Robert ' Guiscard, Norman duke 
of Apulia, who compelled Henry to retreat. The Pope then left 
Rome, which was reduced to a miserable state, and died at Salerno 
in 1085, with words on his lips that showed his unbending firmness 
— " I have loved justice and hated iniquity ; therefore I die an 
exile." In his later years, Henry had much trouble with rebellious 
sons. .The quarrel concerning lay-investiture survived both the 
opponents, and Henry V., younger son and successor of the Canossa 
penitent, went to Rome and forced the Pope (Paschal II.) as his 



236 A History of the World 

prisoner, to crown him as emperor, and to admit the disputed 
right. Then the Lateran Council declared this concession to be 
invalid, as due to force, and another council excommunicated 
Henry, who thus found himself at war with revolted subjects, in- 
cluding the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne. After further 
contest, the matter was settled in 1122 by a compromise called the 
Concordat of Worms. Investiture by the emperor was henceforth 
to precede consecration of a bishop or abbot, and was to be con- 
ferred with the sceptre, the sign of temporal rule only, and not with 
the ring and pastoral staff, and all ecclesiastics who held secular 
benefices were to perform the usual feudal duties. 

We now turn to the Moors and Christians in Spain, to view 
conflicts between the two faiths, and to survey the civilisation intro- 
duced by the Arab conquerors of Andalusia. The caliphate of 
Cordova, in the 9th century, fell into a state of anarchy due to 
the revolt of Arab governors, the hostility of Spanish renegades, or 
Mohammedan Spaniards, to the central power, and the brigandage 
of Berbers who had become independent in the western districts 
such as Estremadura and the south of Portugal. From this evil 
condition the land was quickly and completely rescued through the 
succession, in 912, of the young Abd-er-Rahman III. to the sultanate. 
He was already popular from his handsome person, dignified 
demeanour, graceful manners, and mental powers, and he was now 
to show, in a series of campaigns, his possession of the qualities of 
an able warrior. His march through rebellious regions was in some 
cases a triumphal progress. City after city opened its gates ; the 
Berbers were overcome ; the Christians of Regio, dwelling among 
the mountain-fastnesses of the Sierra Nevada, were brought to 
submission ; and by 930 the surrender of Toledo, the last seat of 
rebellion, placed him in full possession of his dominions. Abd-er- 
Rahman, ruling with justice, tolerance, and enlightened views, was 
a beneficent despot who brought back peace and plenty to a long- 
suffering land. He had a large standing army, with a choice body- 
guard of foreigners — Franks, Slavs, Lombards, and men of many 
other races — purchased as children from Greek and Venetian traders, 
and educated in the faith of Islam. These men were, in fact, 
like the famous Mamluks of a later time in Egypt and Syria. They 
had their own slaves under them, and held estates granted by the 
Sultan, being thus like feudal retainers in other countries. With 
forces including this special corps, the Sultan had not only made 
an end of rebellion and brigandage, but had gained successes over 



The Moors and Christians in Spain 237 

the Christians in the north. In 920 he totally defeated the com- 
bined armies of Navarre and Leon, and after further successes 
Abd-er-Rahman III. set aside openly his supposed allegiance to 
the effete rulers at Bagdad, by assuming, in 929, the title of 
" Caliph," with the addition of words meaning " Defender of the 
Faith of God." For 30 years more he ruled with wisdom in civil 
affairs, waging constant war against the Christians, and sustaining 
from them in 939 a tremendous defeat, in which he lost many 
thousands of men and barely escaped with his life. The blow was 
not followed up, and while the victors were quarrelling among 
themselves the Caliph recruited his army, and was soon again ready 
for the foe. In 961 the great Caliph died, after a reign of nearly 
50 years, during which he had effected a complete change. He 
had curbed the growing power of the Christians of Leon, Castile, 
and Navarre ; he had made Andalusia great and happy, and had 
acquired a fame for wisdom, power, and resources which extended 
to three continents, and brought envoys to his court from the 
emperor at Constantinople, and from rulers in France, Germany, 
and Italy. This eminent Mussulman was not less distinguished by 
mildness and generosity than by strong intellect, strict justice, 
warlike courage, religious zeal, and love of science and learning. 

The beauty and brilliancy of Cordova in those days illustrate 
the marvellous civilisation attained by the Moors in the 10th 
century, at a time when our English forefathers lived in wooden 
houses and trod upon straw, when the language was unformed, and 
reading and writing were unknown except to ecclesiastics. The 
city covered many square miles of ground, and the banks of the 
Guadalquivir were adorned with houses of marble, mosques, and 
gardens showing the rarest flowers and trees of other lands. The 
Arabs brought into the country their own system of irrigation, and 
the exotic plants and trees were watered from the mountains by 
means of leaden pipes bringing the pure liquid to basins of silver, 
inlaid brass, and even of gold, and to lakes, tanks, fountains, and 
reservoirs of marble. A splendid bridge of 17 arches across the 
calmly flowing river showed the skill of the Arabs as engineers, and 
the city, at the height of its prosperity, contained 50,000 houses of 
the noble, official, and wealthy classes ; more than double that 
number of the mass of the people ; 700 mosques ; and 900 public 
baths, essential for Mohammedans whose cleanliness, a part of their 
religion, was in the strongest contrast to the saintly dirt of Christians 
in that age. It is interesting to know that these and all other public 



238 A History of the World 

baths were afterwards destroyed by order of Philip II., as "relics 
of infidelity." The chief mosque still displays much of its mar- 
vellous beauty in countless columns, rare stones, and glass mosaics. 
Cordova was at this time the centre of European culture, sought by 
students from all quarters in search of the knowledge which could 
there be best supplied. 

It is remarkable that the devotees of a religion whose holy book 
contains not a single precept encouraging the study of science or 
literature, became, after their period of conquest, in their days of 
repose and wealth, the possessors and promoters of high culture at 
a time when the Aryan races of Europe were in the depths of the 
"dark ages." At Bagdad the Caliphs Almansor and Haroun-al- 
Raschid invited learned men from all countries to their courts, and 
treated them with princely munificence. The works of the chief 
Greek and old Persian writers were translated into Arabic, and 
spread abroad in numerous copies. Under Al-Mamun excellent 
schools were founded in Bagdad, Basra (Bassora), and Bokhara, 
and great libraries were formed at Bagdad, Alexandria, and Cairo. 
Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, became known then 
in Europe through translation from the Arabic into Latin, when few 
European scholars could read the Greek original. In science the 
Arabs or Moors of Cordova were proficient in zoology, botany, 
chemistry, and astronomy ; and in geography, while the scholars of 
the Western and Eastern Empires believed the earth to be flat, the 
teachers in the preparatory and upper schools of Cordova and 
other cities in Andalusia were giving instruction from globes. 
It was the Arabs who first built in Europe observatories for 
astronomical study, and we have a fact pregnant with meaning 
in that the Spaniards who boasted of driving the Moors out of 
Spain turned such a tower at Seville into a belfry, because they 
could make nothing else of it. Bigotry and superstition have had 
much to do with the present backward condition of the country once 
, glorified by Moorish enlightenment. 

Among the great names of the period are those of Averroes 
of Cordova, the translator and expounder of Aristotle, and Avicenna, 
born near Bokhara, another commentator on Aristotle and a writer 
on medicine and geometry. The mathematical learning of the 
Arabs was derived from the Greeks and the Hindus, translations 
being made from Euclid, Archimedes, and other writers. Their 
arithmetic, with the figures still in use and the decimal system, 
was derived from India, and modern Europe had its first knowledge 



I M nd Christians in Spain 

rider the « M I 

simplified and i the Ai bian 

the- • early in the 

the true hue i 
the In all parts of tin npire 

there were medical schools, cultivating knowledge of Hin 
thouf from progn ss in an 

the I prohibition ol In histori phy 

travellers in 
ther parts "f the 
• nical pharmac) i by the Arab al< 

the | chemistry, men who, toilii their 

mical 
! with mercury a 
ulphur and arsenic, and furnished us with the 
tern;- 1 elixir. In architecture S 

art d< the hor- 

rid painted do oration 
• mu< li used both by 
the • in the 

• 
by an n forbade the introduction of animal I 

than thi nd nun. ire's and | 

. r to the 
. in the 

i 

within tl 

nd loveliest plains in 
; building 

: 
■ 

' I 



240 A History of the World 

with arabesque patterns in yellow and green upon a blue ground. 
Almeria, a very populous and flourishing town on the south-east 
coast, great in the arts, industry, and commerce, the chief port 
of trade with Italy and the East, was famous for vessels of glass, 
iron, and brass. Beautiful jewellery in silver-gilt adorned with 
pearls, sword-hilts, keys, ivory-carving of much delicacy, chased 
bronze, filigree-work, Toledo sword-blades, fine armour — all these, 
in extant specimens, prove the skill of the Moorish artisans. 
Here we must close our scanty contribution towards payment 
of the great European debt, never yet fittingly acknowledged, to 
these Mohammedan conquerors of Spain. 

Hakam II., son and successor of Abd-er-Rahman III., was a 
peaceful studious personage, and the Mohammedan cause against 
the Christians was sustained by his very able and energetic minister 
Almanzor, who became the virtual ruler of all Mohammedan Spain, 
ridding himself of all rivals with unscrupulous skill. He reformed 
the military force, won the devotion of the troops by liberality 
combined with strict discipline, led them to battle and booty 
in many successful campaigns against the Christians of the north, 
kept a keen eye on all departments of administration, and before 
his death in 1002 brought Andalusia to its highest point of glory. 
A time of anarchy then came for nearly a century — a time of 
revolution ; tumults and massacres and plunder in beautiful 
Cordova ; the rise of independent petty dynasties in many provinces 
or towns ; devastation by the Berbers and the revolted corps of 
"Slavs." The Christians did not fail to take advantage of this 
state of affairs. Alfonso III., whose reign of 44 years ended in 
910, had by his valour and firmness secured, for many years, the 
Christian hold upon Asturias, Biscay, Galicia, northern Portugal, 
and a large part of Navarre. He won many victories over the 
Moors, and left the territory with the name of the " kingdom of 
Leon," called from the new capital, a city in the open plain, 
half-way between the sea and the Douro. The assumption of this 
position showed a great advance for the Christians, who had long 
been sheltered in mountain-regions. Then, after suicidal warfare 
between the new kingdom and the rising Christian realm Castile, 
came the conquering career of Almanzor, and in 996 the capital, 
Leon, was taken, with the slaughter of all the people. Another 
turn of fortune was seen in the helpless state of Andalusia as 
above described. Leon was rebuilt, and peace was made with 
Castile. Sancho, king of Navarre, became master of Castile in 1026, 



The \1 I ( Ihristians in 24 1 

•in a united ( 'lir: 
1 by the in when Ins death in 

I'M his tl 

At last Alfonso VI. became king 

his utt< 

ailed the '" in • <>r saints, the . / 

rush writers. They had minion w 

•\ 11 i thi •< w inder their k \ if, of all 

m. with • 

:!1 philosi 
and < mel pei Christians, hut 

1 they, like the 

the Visigol 
. and in 20 ne had lost all martial power, 

falling t<> pieces under thi 
oft'. rhen the people rose and drove tin- Almonu 

from the land 

ddle 

and 

I , liter 

and romance, the centra] fi 

k •. . 1 ' 
by hirth 

I : 

1 1 
H 

I i 

11 • 



242 A History of the World 

We go back for a short time, as regards the Eastern (Greek) 
Empire, to the previous period. Leo the Isaurian, who had dealt 
so victoriously with the Saracens in 718, was afterwards engaged for 
some years with a very different foe — the gross superstition which 
was carrying the worship of images to a monstrous height. The 
great central truths of Christianity had become mixed up with and 
overgrown by childish legends, observances, and rites, and the 
worship of images and relics resembled African fetichism. Every 
picture and statue of a saint had its special miraculous powers for 
the votaries of this degraded form of religion. Leo headed a 
reaction of the more intelligent laity, and in 725 issued an edict 
ordering the removal of all the images in Constantinople. Serious 
rioting broke out, and the mob killed in their fury the officials who 
were taking down the great crucifix above the palace-gate. The 
executions which followed this act inaugurated Leo's use of armed 
force against the image-worshippers in every part of the empire. 
The famous Iconoclastic struggle included revolts in Greece and 
Italy against the emperor, only suppressed after hard fighting, and 
the Popes encouraged the rebels in a contest which tended to 
heighten their own spiritual and temporal authority. Leo's influence 
with the army alone saved his throne. His civil work was 
distinguished by sound legislation, the reforming of finance, and 
a reorganisation of the state which gave it a new lease of life and 
vigour for three centuries. His son Constantine V., who followed 
him in 740, persecuted the image-worshippers even more fiercely 
than Leo, and extended his hostility to the monasteries. The 
dynasty ended in 797 with the monstrous crime of the arrogant, 
clever, and popular empress Irene. When she was acting as 
regent for her young son Constantine VI., she seized and blinded 
him, and made him a prisoner in a monastery. She was deposed 
from power in 802 by Nicephorus, one of her chief officials, a man 
of' Oriental origin, and an opponent of the image-worship. After 
much trouble with the caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, to whom he had 
to pay a large war-indemnity, this emperor died in 811, in battle 
with Bulgarians who were ravaging Thrace. Leo the Armenian 
earned the nickname of " the Chameleon " by a middle policy 
between image-breaking and image-worship, but by a severe defeat 
of the Bulgarians he rid the empire of their presence for over half 
a century. Murdered by conspirators at early communion on 
Christmas-day, 820, he was succeeded by a military officer, of 
peasant birth, named Michael. During his brief reign the Saracens 



The Byzantine Empire 243 

conquered Crete, and after his death Moors from Africa won the 
whole of Sicily. 

In 886 began a fairly peaceful and monotonous period, lasting 
until 963, occupied by two reigns, those of another Leo and 
another Constantine. They were both men of merely literary 
ambition, who left behind them some interesting works — Leo on 
military affairs, and Constantine on the administration of the empire. 
A literary revival, before this period, had produced the learned and 
cultured Photius, Patriarch of Cons'antinople, who took a great 
part in the severance of the Eastern and Western Churches. Art 
was also improved at this time, in the execution of illuminated 
manuscripts, and Constantinople, amid a general decay of maritime 
trade due to the ravages of Saracen pirates, became, from the middle 
of the 9th to the end of the nth century, the one great commercial 
city of Europe, transmitting the products of the East to Italy and 
France under guard of the imperial navy. A time of military 
prowess arrived with the brave and able commander Nicephorus 
Phocas, head of a great family of landowners in Asia Minor. In 
961 he regained Crete for the empire, and took many forts in Cilicia 
and northern Syria from the Saracens, completing the conquest of 
those territories, as co-emperor with two minors, between 964 and 
968. This rugged, stern soldier was murdered in 969 by his wife 
Theophano and her lover John Zimisces, a distinguished young officer 
of cavalry, who succeeded as emperor. He won fame by his 
defeat of a great host of Russians who had invaded the Balkan 
peninsula. It was a desperate battle of sturdy and obstinate 
Slavonic infantry, having viking blood in their veins, clad in mail 
shirts and helmets, and wielding battle-axe and spear, against the 
mailed Asiatic horsemen, and bowmen. and slingers, of the Byzantine 
force. It was the archers that thinned the ranks of the great square 
columns, and made an entrance for Zimisces' horsemen. Five 
years after the great victory at Silistria, Zimisces died, in 976, and 
was succeeded by the young Basil II. This warlike, ascetic 
sovereign, who always had the monk's dress under his armour 
and his imperial robes, reigned for nearly 50 years, and acquired, in 
his continuous struggles, the surname of " Slayer of the Bulgarians.'' 
These people were forced back, in a contest of over 30 years' 
duration, from south of the Balkans to the Danube, so that the 
empire became conterminous with the territory of the Magyars in 
Hungary. Basil, in the latter part of his reign, had much success 
on his eastern frontier against the Moslem, and on his death in 



244 A History of the World 

1025 he had won more territory for the empire than any man since 
the time of Belisarius and Narses. Under weak successors much 
was lost, and in 1055 the last Byzantine possession west of the 
Adriatic became the Norman duchy of Apulia. A terrible foe had 
already appeared on the Armenian border — the Seljuk Turks, to 
be much seen hereafter. 

Anarchy caused by foreign invasion and civil war came in the 
latter half of the nth century, and the empire received blows and 
injuries that couid not be repaired. The emperors are not worthy 
of mention. The Turks, on the east, pressed forward in a career 
of ruthless cruelty under their sultan Alp Arslan, warring as light 
horse-archers, able to elude the heavy cavalry of their foe. The 
final disaster belongs to the year 107 1. The emperor-regent 
Romanus, an Asiatic noble, who had shown fine courage against 
the Turks, met their whole army at Manzikert, on the Armenian 
frontier. Prudence counselled delay to a commander having with 
him only a portion of his forces, and that composed of men wearied 
by long marches, but the Byzantine ruler rushed at once upon the 
Mussulmans, trusting to the weight of his cuirassiers. For a long 
summer's day the Turkish light horsemen were constantly broken 
and forced back, but the contest was ever renewed, and in the dusk 
confusion arose among the imperial forces from mistake of orders 
combined with either cowardice or treachery in the leader of the 
reserves, who quitted the field with all his men. The rest of the 
army was almost destroyed, and Romanus came into Alp Arslan's 
tent as a prisoner, and, according to Turkish custom, had his con- 
queror's foot placed on his bowed neck. He was soon afterwards 
released on ransom, only to be seized at home by a rival, and 
blinded with a savage roughness that caused his death. The 
decisive day of Manzikert was a turning-point in the long and 
chequered history of the Greek Empire. Asia Minor seemed for 
ever lost, and civil wars between pretenders to the throne were 
raging while the Turks were drawing nearer and nearer to Con- 
stantinople. We leave the subject at present with the accession to 
power, in 1081, of the brave and able Alexius Comnenus, a strange 
compound of virtue and vice, unequalled in his time for mendacity, 
meanly treacherous, foully perjured, but unstained by cruelty, and 
the deliverer of the empire, for a season, from an abyss of ruin. 

We shall now pass to Italy and see something of the rise of the 
republics in that beautiful country, of most complex, varied, and 
troublous history in mediaeval days. The renowned Florence had 



The Rise of the Italian Republics 245 

its origin in the ancient Etruscan town Fiesole (Faesulae), built on 
the crest of an irregular height overlooking the fertile plain traversed 
by the Arno. A new town began at the foot of the hill, for the 
convenience of the traders resorting to the river, and this was the 
nucleus of Florence, a name of unknown source. The place is 
mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny, and before the imperial time of 
Rome it was a very fine municipal town. The city, restored by 
Augustus, becomes historically obscure under the Visigoths and 
Langobards or Lombards, emerging to view in the time of Karl the 
Great (Charlemagne), and governed by a duke, aided by officials 
chosen by him and the citizens. It is clear that the tendency of 
the people was towards self-government, and in the nth century, 
when Florence and a large part of Tuscany were included in the 
Papal territory, she became a flourishing free city, with inhabitants 
of republican spirit, patriotic and enterprising. The situation was 
favourable to trade, and at this early period Florentines had a share 
in European commerce, with store-houses in French and English 
seaports, and credit for skill in goldwork and jewellery. The coin 
called " florin " derived its name from the place where, at this time, 
it was first struck in gold. The enthusiasm and vitality of the 
citizens found a vent in warfare against one of their bishops who 
was accused of simony in purchasing appointment to his see, and 
the contest, after an appeal to the Pope, ended in their favour in 
1068. The trade-guilds became of great importance, and the basis 
of a strong republic was formed. 

Genoa, the ancient capital of Liguria, and an important place 
in Roman times, finely situated for commerce, fell by turns into the 
hands of the Lombards, the Franks, and the Germans, always 
preserving, however, a high degree of prosperity. In the time of 
the Saracen conquests, the citizens showed courage and enterprise 
against the common foe, and began a great career of commercial 
development in the conquest of Corsica, for a time, from the Moors. 
Genoa soon became a strong independent little republican state, 
the history of which runs parallel, for a time, with that of its perma- 
nent rival Pisa, in alliance with which the subjugation of Sardinia 
and Corsica was effected. At the close of the nth century the 
Genoese formed a strong maritime and naval state, having also a 
considerable army. Pisa, lying on the Arno about 50 miles west 
of Florence, was a seaport until accumulation of matter at the river- 
mouth caused it to stand four miles from the sea, the source of 
its power in mediaeval times. Early in the nth century the city, 
17 



246 A History of the World 

which had received a diploma, conceding the exercise of her ancient 
customs, from Henry IV. of Germany, had become a powerful little 
republic, possessed of a good naval force and much territory along 
the sea-coast. Her noblest buildings arose at this period of her 
greatest prosperity, when she helped Otto II. against the Greek 
cities of southern Italy, fought the Saracens (Moors) with her 
galleys, carried on a great trade with the East, and put forth a code 
of maritime law which was the basis of such legislation for most 
of the Mediterranean commerce. The Moorish territory in Africa 
was twice invaded, and the Moslem were thoroughly defeated, in 
1062, off Palermo. Early in the 12th century the Pisans deprived 
the Moors of the Balearic Isles. The wealth, independence, and 
luxurious life of the chief Pisan merchants were almost princely, and 
the state was a formidable rival to Genoa and Florence. 

The renowned state which arose at an early date among the 
lagunes at the head of the Adriatic now demands our attention. 
Venice is, to the historian, the artist, and the lover of the picturesque, 
a word of magical power, carrying with it a singular, and, in seme 
respects, an unrivalled interest. The light of romance still gleams 
over her waters even in days when the smoke of the steam-vessel 
profanes, as some conceive, the city of the many islands, the scene 
of the rule of Doges and of the terrible Council of Ten, the bride of 
the sea. Art, commerce, wealth, luxury, splendour, and an existence, 
as a free state, extending over 1,100 years, combined with the 
strangeness of her geographical position, and her political importance 
in great periods of European history, are the chief elements in the 
glory of mediaeval and modern Venice. Early in the 4th century 
of the Christian era, the islands of the lagunes had been partly 
occupied by people who fled from the mainland of Italy to escape 
from Alaric the Visigoth and other invaders. The incursion of Attila 
and his Huns in the middle of the century made the region a perma- 
nent abode, and we may place the origin of Venice in this period. 
The islands of the stream called Rivus Altus (Rialto) were those 
chiefly selected as places of refuge in the strange region of shallow 
waters, penetrating towards the plains of the mainland, dotted with 
islands and intersected by canals. A long curved narrow tongue of 
land called littorali or lidi, " shores " or " banks," separates the 
lagune from the open sea, with the concave side facing thereto, and 
having several openings which admit the tide to the inner waters, 
affording purity to the air and passage for ships to the safe inner 
basin. In course of time walls were built to protect the various 



1 R f the Italian Republics 247 

nan: 

. DCaUtiful 

in ti had 

:i of the isles, under which a mai rned 

■ 

>f the 11 of Veni( 

the main I Padua, whose inhabitants hail in earlier 

tributed t>> her foundation. The irruption of the 
I 1 under Alboin, in the 6th centui 

and Ven v in 

ie end <>f that century 1 the 

. icument ensuring the protection of 

the imperial t th full liberty for trade, and thus began the 

, brilliant, and intei tnnection of Venice with the 1 

nd merchants 
ments and cellars <»f their palaces, to « 

■ las, 

. 

; the 7th century the 61 I Duke) 

lute, 

lally f ritt < T of authority, until he 

I of the sl with 

mony. from 

:i the mainland. 
I tribute paid in kind. In tin ern- 

idult mali mity 

, Middle, Li er or 1 

• Doj : but 

red. 

ii centur] came, territorj on the I had 

1 

1 



248 A History of the World 

of the town. During a long period of comparative peace Istria 
was annexed ; commercial traffic was extended to the farthest shores 
of the Black Sea, and Venice became a leading maritime power in 
the Levant. After successive and very destructive conflagrations 
among the wooden buildings, marble from the Dalmatian and 
Italian quarries was brought into play, and the splendid solid 
palaces of the city of the lagunes began to rise. In the 10th century 
there was much trouble through pestilence and civil war, during 
which the first St. Mark's was burnt to the ground, the restored 
edifice being finished in 107 1. After much intestine strife and 
popular turbu'lence, a glorious time for Venice came with the 
rule of Doge Orseolo II. (991-1008), who restored order with a 
strong hand ; promoted trade by treaties, including one with the 
Saracens ; conquered Dalmatia ; and increased the commercial 
and naval importance of the state which was assuming the highest 
position among importing and distributing communities. Towards the 
end of the nth century there was fierce fighting, with alternations of 
success, in the Adriatic, off the coast of Dalmatia, with the Normans 
of Apulia, under Robert Guiscard, Venice being the ally of Alexius 
Comnenus, emperor at Constantinople. By this time Venice had 
attained a commanding position in the world of commerce, not 
only through her extensive sea-traffic, but in a brisk trade on the 
Italian mainland, largely carried on by caravans, and in letting 
out ships and boats to other peoples. The navigators were famed 
for their enterprise and skill. In the city, the people displayed a 
keen love of pleasure and pageant, which was gratified by religious 
and secular festivals, and by regattas and other aquatic sports. 



BOOK III. 

THE CRUSADE PERIOD (a.d. 1096- 12 70). 

Chapter I. — The Crusades; Monasticism ; Feudalism; the 
Age of Faith and Chivalry. 

The wonderful expeditions called the Crusades were undertaken 
from a variety of motives. The inspirer of the First Crusade was, 
beyond doubt, chiefly Pope Urban II. (1088-1099), who saw the 
interest of the Church in a general excitement of religious enthusiasm, 
and delivered an address to the multitude assembled at a council at 



The Crusades 249 

Clermont, in Auvergne, in the autumn of 1095. A native of Rheims, 
and educated as a monk at Clugny (or Cluni), a famous Benedictine 
abbey near Macon, unsurpassed in the middle ages for splendour 
and influence, and second to Rome alone as a centre of Christianity, 
Urban was able to lay aside in his discourse the Latin of universal 
use among ecclesiastics, and to preach to the French warriors in his 
and their mother-tongue. He appealed to them in behalf of the 
pilgrims to the Holy Land, ill-treated by the Moslem possessors of 
the country ; of Jerusalem and its sacred buildings, the vault and 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built by St. Helena, mother of 
Constantine the Great ; and of Antioch, once the city of St, Peter, 
given over to Mohammedan sway and superstition. He bade them 
exchange warfare amongst themselves for fight against infidels, and 
his words were received with enthusiastic cries of " Deus vult ! " 
"It is God's will !" Crosses were distributed to all who professed 
their readiness to start, and the bishops and priests of the Council 
returned to their homes to preach the new gospel in every quarter. 
There is much legendary matter concerning a little bright-eyed man 
of eloquent speech called Peter the Hermit or Peter of Amiens, 
who traversed France, riding on an ass, with a crucifix in his hand, 
and everywhere called on people to arise and start for the scene of 
action. An epidemical frenzy was caused by remission of penance, 
absolution of all sins, and assurance of eternal felicity for those who 
"took the cross," or went on the Crusade. Sham miracles and 
fanatical prophecies aroused high enthusiasm among the superstitious. 
There were thousands who made use of so excellent an opportunity 
to gratify curiosity, restlessness, love of licence, thirst for battle, 
emulation, and ambition. Some of the leaders aimed at founding 
principalities in the East. Some hoped to repair broken fortunes by 
the plunder of towns believed to hold boundless wealth. Of the 
common herd, the rank and file, of these expeditions, there were 
many thousands who sought there a refuge from the consequences 
of debt or crime. The Crusading host included priests who left their 
parishes, and monks who abandoned their cells ; peasants exchanging 
the condition of serfs bound to the soil for a life of adventure ; many 
women and children were found in the miscellaneous, undisciplined 
bands, led by Peter the Hermit, and such men as Gualtier Senzavoir, 
or " Walter the Penniless." Of these irregular hordes who started 
for the East, the vast majority perished, after boundless suffering 
from privation, at the hands of the people of Bulgaria, who were 
incensed by pillage. 



250 A History of the World 

The first band of regular Crusaders was the Teutonic host, under 
the famous Godfre) of Bouillon, in Lorraine, who started in August, 
1096, and after some trouble with Alexius, the emperor, at 
Constantinople, crossed into Asia early in 1097. Bohemond of 
Tarentum, in southern Italy, a son of Robert Guiscard, and his 
relative Tancred, the famous hero of Tasso's poem, led a body of 
Normans. Raymond, count of Toulouse ; Hugo of Vermandois, 
brother of Philip I. of France ; and Robert, duke of Normandy, 
son of William the Conqueror, were other leaders of large bodies 
of men who made their way to Constantinople, numbering in all 
several hundred thousands. The emperor Alexius exacted trom all 
the leaders an oath of fealty or feudal homage, binding them to 
restore to the empire whatever territory they might conquer from the 
infidels, if it had previously belonged to the Byzantine rulers. The 
warriors of the Crusade were strong in their mail-clad horsemen, 
and in the course of two years they beat down all resistance of the 
Moslem. In June, 1097, Nicaea, the capital of the Seljuk Turks 
of Asia Minor, was surrendered to the Greek emperor, who 
accompanied the expedition to look after his own interests. In July, 
on the way to Antioch, the first pitched battle was won by the 
Crusaders at Dorylaeum, in Phrygia, where the cavalry, protected by 
helmet and shield, scale and chain armour, carrying a long lance, 
sword, battle-axe, and heavy mace or club, and supported by archers 
with the long-bow or cross-bow, completely defeated the light 
quick-moving Asiatic horse under the sultan Soliman. The way 
to Syria was opened by the victory which restored to the Eastern 
Empire all the west of Asia Minor, and forced the Sultan of Roum 
to fix his capital at I'conium, in the south of the peninsula. Terrible 
privations were endured before the Christians arrived at Antioch, 
the great and. populous capital of Syria, defended by hilly ground, 
marshes, and a. wall of great height and solidity. The army melted 
away from desertion, fatigue-, and famine, and it was only after 
a siege of seven months, in. June, 1098, that the city fell through 
the treachery of one of the defenders. The captors of Antioch 
were then beleaguered by a. fresh host of Mussulmans from Persia, 
and endured much from famine until a desperate sortie under 
Tancred, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Bohemond, drove off the 
besiegers. Resting during the summer heat, the Crusaders marched 
along the coast to Jerusalem in the spring of 1099, and, now 
reduced to little more than 20,000 effective fighters, they stormed 
the city in July, after a siege of five weeks. The place was taken 



The Crusades 251 

from the Saracens of Egypt, whose caliph had conquered it recently 
from the Turks. A horrible massacre of the Moslem people 
occurred, in which 70,000 are said to have perished. The Jews 
were burnt alive in their synagogues. It was thus that the votaries 
of the religion of mercy showed their zeal for the Christian cause. 
The political result of this First Crusade was the establishment of 
Christian kingdoms at Jerusalem, at Antioch, and at Edessa, in 
Mesopotamia. The coast-towns of Palestine were taken with help 
from the naval forces of Pisa and Genoa, and the kingdom of 
Jerusalem continued until its conquest by Saladin of Egypt near 
the close of the 12th century. We may note here the part played 
in the First Crusade by citizens of some of the Italian republics. 
As the Crusaders marched southwards along the shore of Syria, 
between the mountains and the sea, passing amidst the relics of 
old Phoenicia at Sidon, Tyre, Tripoli, and Acre, they obtained their 
supplies from traders of Pisa and Genoa, running down along the 
coast. When they had reached Jerusalem by way of Lydda, 
Emmaus, and other scenes of sacred history, they were enabled 
to attack the walls with success by means of a drawbridge let down 
from a huge movable tower of timber, constructed by the skill of 
Genoese artisans. 

The Second Crusade (1147-1149) was marked by the presence 
of two European sovereigns, Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. 
of France. The religious feeling of the West had been aroused 
by Moslem conquest of the kingdom of Edessa, and the famous 
St. Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux in Champagne, a chief theologian 
of mediaeval times, an oracle of Christendom, kindled the enthusiasm 
of French and German warriors by the glowing eloquence of his 
addresses at the Council of\e'zelay, near Auxerre, and during a 
tour beyond the Rhine- In this disastrous enterprise many 
thousands of lives were flung away. The German force was almost 
annihilated in Asia Minor by famine and Turkish attacks, and the 
French host suffered a like fate in Cilicia and northern Syria, 
without rendering the least service to the cause of Christianity 
against the infidels. 

The Third Crusade (1189-1192) is familiar to readers of British 
history from the presence and achievements of Richard Cceur de 
Lion. This renewal of the warfare of the West against the East 
was marked by some brilliant deeds of arms, but it had little 
permanent effect. The immediate cause of the expedition was 
the capture of Jerusalem in 1187 by Saladin of Egypt, one of the 



252 A History of the World 

noblest characters of that or of any age, a most gallant soldier, a 
wise ruler, true as the steel of his own scimitar, magnanimous, 
just, generous — at all points the model of Moslem chivalry. The 
emperor Frederick I. of Germany, the famous " Barbarossa," who 
had taken part in the Second Crusade, 40 years previously, was 
the first to set forth, when he was nearly 70 years of age, and 
make his toilsome way through Hungary and Bulgaria. He entered 
Asia in the spring of 11 90, and was drowned in trying to swim 
a rapid stream on the borders of Cilicia, when he was heated and 
fatigued by the march. Richard of England and Philip Augustus 
of France were somewhat later in the field. They stayed some 
months in Sicily on the road, and when Richard sailed for Palestine 
in April, 1191, he was delayed farther by a storm which scattered 
his fleet, and by a call at Cyprus, where he conquered the island 
from the churlish king Isaac Comnenus, of the Byzantine imperial 
family, who had ill-treated some of the shipwrecked crews. At the 
same time and place Richard married Berengaria of Navarre, 
whom his mother Eleanor had brought to Messina. The English 
king, the most athletic and brilliant of feudal warriors, soon made 
his presence known in Palestine by the capture of Acre, besieged 
in vain for two years. In July, 1191, he was deserted, after many 
quarrels, by his French colleague, and he then started along the 
shore for Ascalon, accompanied abreast by Saladin's host, and 
harassed by the terrible heat. A fierce battle, in which Richard 
was foremost, cleaving his way through the enemy's ranks, ended 
in the defeat of the Saracens, who left 32 emirs, or chieftains, 
a title familiar to us from modern warfare in the Soudan, and 
7,000 men, dead on the ground. Ascalon and Jaffa were held 
by the Crusaders. Many delays occurred, owing to quarrels, and 
to vain negotiations with Saladin, and it was not until June, 1192, 
that an advance was made towards Jerusalem. A great caravan 
on its way from Egypt was captured, with vast spoil in gold, silver, 
silks, spices, and weapons, nearly 5,000 camels, and countless asses 
and mules. After a retreat to Acre, for unknown reasons, Richard 
again met and defeated the Saracens, who were besieging Jaffa, 
and then the almost useless enterprise came to an end with a truce 
made between the English leader and Saladin, who had a sincere 
admiration of each other's prowess. The strip of coast between 
Joppa (Jaffa) and Acre was yielded to the Christians, and Saladin's 
promise, as good as any Christian's oath, secured safety for pilgrims 
to the " Holy Places " at Jerusalem, and gave permission for Latin 



The Crusades 253 

priests to celebrate divine service at the Holy Sepulchre and at 
Bethlehem and Nazareth. The failure of the Third Crusade was 
mainly due to divisions among the Christian leaders. Richard 
of the Lion Heart was alone zealous in the cause, and his last 
words, as the low shore of the Holy Land faded from his view, 
were a prayer that he might yet return to its aid. 

In connection with these expeditions to the East, we may observe 
that progress thither, from western Europe, both by land and sea, 
in and after the nth century, had been made easy by two circum- 
stances. The conversion of the Hungarians to Christianity opened 
communication down the Danube, and the sea-route was cleared 
by the destruction of Saracen naval power in the Mediterranean 
through the action of the fleets of the Pisans, Genoese, 'and Normans 
in the open sea, and of the Venetians in the Adriatic waters. Up 
to that time, no war-galleys belonging to any Christian power except 
that of Constantinople had been seen in the great central sea. 
The Fourth Crusade (1 202-1 204), undertaken through the influence 
of Pope Innocent III., and including as many greedy military 
adventurers as real enthusiasts, was entirely useless as regarded 
the main purpose of the expedition. The leaders of the enterprise 
were great French barons, assisted by Baldwin, count of Flanders, 
a gallant, pious, and generous man, a worthy successor of Godfrey 
of Bouillon, and by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, a territory 
in the north-west of Italy. This Lombard noble, a cunning schemer, 
cared for nothing but wealth and fame to be won in the East, by 
any forceful or fraudulent means. The aged Venetian Doge, 
Henry Dandolo, a man of the clearest head and the most 
unswerving energy, took part in the expedition solely for the interests 
of his country. The bulk-of the force included relic-hunting abbots 
in coats of mail, penniless knights, Venetian seamen who were 
half-pirates, and the brutal soldiery of the West. The Crusaders, 
when they did start, were persuaded by Dandolo to turn aside 
from Egypt to Constantinople, in order to help the dethroned 
Alexius Angelus. Some particulars will be given in the further 
history of the Greek Empire, and we need here only record, as 
the sole result of the Fourth Crusade, the establishment of a 
" Latin Empire " at Constantinople. The height of folly was reached 
in the "children's crusade" of 12 12, when thousands of French and 
German boys started for the Holy Land, only to die by the way, 
to wander back home in rags, or be sold into slavery. 

The Fifth Crusade (1228-1229) was conducted by Frederick II., 



254 A History of the World 

emperor of the Western or " Holy Roman " Empire, who landed at 
Acre in September, 1228, with a force of only 600 knights, and 
made a friendly arrangement with the Moslem ruler at Jerusalem by 
which the Holy City (except the site of the Temple, covered by the 
Mosque of Omar), Bethlehem, and Nazareth were surrendered to 
the Christians. This proceeding was severely condemned by the 
Patriarch of Constantinople and by Pope Gregory IX. as a betrayal 
of the honour of the Church. In 1239 another expedition, not 
reckoned as one of the regular Crusades, started from Marseilles 
under Theobald, king of Navarre, being chiefly composed of 
Spaniards and Frenchmen. The Moslem position in the East had 
been of late much weakened by feuds among themselves, and by 
Tartar (Mongol) attacks, and a favourable opportunity seemed to 
have come. Part of the force was, however, destroyed in a surprise 
by the Saracens, and Theobald, in the following year, left Acre, 
with his followers, and went home. In 1244 Jerusalem was finally 
conquered by an Eastern tribe of Mohammedans, driven from their 
abode by the Mongols under the famous Genghis Khan, and this 
really ended Christian sway in Palestine. 

From this time forward, Crusading enthusiasm in the West was 
dying away under the influence of new ideas and aspirations. 
Important political changes were in progress, in the rise of great 
cities, the consolidation of kingdoms, the struggles for power 
between monarchs and nobles, combined with the beginnings of new 
studies and opinions, and of a transition from the age of blind faith 
to that of reason and argument. In France alone, under the rule of 
a truly pious king at the middle of the 13th century, could a monarch 
be found who was ready to " assume the cross." The Sixth Crusade 
( 1 248-1 254) was due to the zeal of Louis IX. (St. Louis), who went 
to Egypt in the spring of 1249, after spending the winter at Cyprus in 
making preparations. The Saracens fled from Damietta at the mere 
sight of the great French armament of 1,800 vessels, but returned in 
great force, and in April, 1250, captured Louis and his army on the 
advance to Cairo. He was released, after some time, on ransom, 
and then passed four years in Palestine, engaged in fortifying Acre 
and other coast-towns, and in rebuilding Cassarea, Jaffa, and Sidon. 
The Seventh Crusade (1270) was also undertaken by Louis, who 
was accompanied by the kings of Aragon and Navarre. They 
landed at Tunis, in the hope of converting the ruler to Christianity, 
and there, in August, the excellent king of France died of 
dysentery, murmuring "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 1 ' as he lay on his 



The Crusades 255 

ash-strewn bed. The greater part of his army was swept away by 
sickness, and this was the end of the Crusades. An illustrious 
prince, eldest son of Henry III. of England, with many young 
nobles of his country, started soon after St. Louis. In October, 
1270, they were at Tunis, and in the following year they arrived at 
Acre just in time to save the place from the Saracens. Some small 
successes came, and Edward was joined by a great force from 
Cyprus. In June, 1272, occurred the stroke of an assassin with a 
poisoned dagger, from the effects of which the prince was saved, not 
through the sucking of the wound by his beloved wife Eleanor, 
according to the romantic story invented half a century later, but 
by an English doctor's excision of the tainted flesh. A ten-years' 
truce was concluded with the Moslem, and Edward left for England 
with the princess in September, 1272. Nearly 20 years passed away, 
and then, in 1291, the Christian kingdom of Acre was overcome 
by the Mohammedans, a century after the recovery of the fortress 
by the Christians of the Third Crusade, and with the surrender 
of Tyre, Berytus, Sidon, and other ports, the Christian hold on 
Palestine was ended. 

The Crusades were the greatest events of the middle ages, the 
outcome of the deepest and most lasting enthusiasm, except that of 
Mohammedanism, which has been seen in the world. The move- 
ment cannot be fairly ascribed to popular delusion, or to calculating 
Papal policy,, or to an outbreak of barbaric zeal for war. The 
Crusades were wars for an idea, and in this respect differed from all 
other " wars of religion," because they were not influenced by 
intolerance or sectarian jealousy. As the first united effort of 
Western Christendom, they -embodied, in spite of the mingling of 
interested motives already noted, the best of the mediaeval spirit, 
and had an excellent moral influence in rousing the heroic and 
unselfish side of human nature. Failing in the grand object of 
finally expelling the Moslem from the Holy Land, the Crusades 
succeeded in delaying the fall of the Eastern Empire, a bulwark of 
Christendom, though the Fourth Crusade, which overthrew the true 
Eastern Empire, did .great mischief in aggravating the political and 
religious dissensions of East and West, and rendering a combined 
effort against the Turk impossible. Politically viewed, the Crusades 
were a phase -of the eternal " Eastern Question" which, in these latest 
years of the 19th century, is still before the statesmen and 
diplomatists of the Western World. It was an event of vast impor- 
tance for Western civilisation that the tide of Turkish conquest was 



256 A History of the World 

stemmed for three centuries, until a new Europe of powerful 
consolidated states was existing, and the West could defy the utmost 
efforts of the worst human products of the East, the barbarians who, 
unlike the Saracens or the Moors of Spain, are devoid of literature, 
science, and art, and, capable only of valorous and skilful warfare, 
and, at times, of brutal massacre and outrage, still pollute with their 
presence the soil of Europe, under the special sanction and 
encouragement, for their own ends, of two " Christian " emperors. 

Among the effects of the Crusades, we may notice first the 
increase for a season of the power of the Papacy, which became the 
political centre of Latin Christendom. Civil authority was lowered 
as the ecclesiastical influence was raised, and the power of the 
Church was augmented by the institution of the new military orders, 
and those of the Friars, both due, directly or indirectly, to these 
great expeditions to the East. Ecclesiastics were enriched by the 
purchase, on most favourable terms, of the estates of Crusading 
barons and knights eager to raise money for the great expenses of 
their enterprise. In the political system, the power of the feudal 
sovereigns was increased through the reversion into their hands of 
many fiefs which became vacant. The absence, for long periods, of 
many members of the baronage threw more executive authority into 
the hands of royal officials. It was in France, especially, that the 
formation of a powerful monarchy was favoured by the merging of 
petty fiefs in the greater, and then of these larger lordships in the 
domains of the Crown. The power of the Empire declined, during 
the Crusade period, with the growth of the Papacy, and Germany and 
Italy became, for centuries, miserable spectacles of disintegration. 
Another important political effect was the rise and increase of 
municipal power in the towns, where the wealthy traders purchased 
charters of freedom from " overlords," or feudal proprietors desirous 
of raising funds for the fashionable trip to the East. When we turn 
to the social effects of the Crusades, we note the growth of inter- 
national sympathy among those who shared the same dangers and 
toils in a common cause ; the great development of trade and 
manufactures, in the necessity of providing the Crusading armies with 
weapons, clothing, harness, horses, and other articles, and in the 
introduction to Europe of Asiatic products. At this period the 
Italian republics reached their height of commercial prosperity, 
though Venice suffered greatly in the end through the loss of her 
previous monopoly of the Eastern trade, which she had to share 
henceforth with Pisa, Genoa, and Flanders. A great increase of 



The Knights Hospitallers 257 

comfort and luxury in western Europe followed the connection, in 
the East, with Oriental modes of life, and the rude feudal nobility 
were improved in culture and manners. All orders of society derived 
some benefit from the change. In another view, the maritime energy 
fostered by the Crusades led to the great discoveries of the 15th 
and 1 6th centuries, and to the same source we may trace the growth 
of maritime law, and the commercial finance of banking and exchange. 
To conclude, there was, in the Crusade period, a great stirring-up 
of stagnant waters which gave the Western world a new historical, 
poetical, and romantic literature, a great increase of geographical know- 
ledge, and, according to some authorities, a new intellectual light not 
remotely connected with the event called the Reformation. 

The foundation of the religious orders of knighthood is due to 
the same enthusiastic feeling as that which prompted the Crusades. 
The earliest of these institutions was that of the Knights of St. John, 
or Hospitallers, having their origin about 1048 in a hospital 
founded at Jerusalem, with permission of the Moslem ruler, by 
some merchants of Amalfi, then a flourishing seaport and centre 
of Eastern trade, on the west coast of southern Italy. The hospital, 
provided for the tendance of Christian pilgrims, was dedicated to 
St. John the Baptist, and after the First Crusade many of the soldiers 
of the army joined the servants of the hospital, and devoted their 
lives to the care of poor and sick pilgrims. They were all formed 
into a regular religious body, with vows of poverty, chastity, and 
obedience, under special protection of the Papal See, by a bull 
from Pope Paschal II., which confirmed to the Order, in 11 13, the 
possessions held both in Syria and in western Europe. In due 
course, the .service of the Order was extended to the armed pro- 
tection of pilgrims journeying from the seaports to Jerusalem, and 
the Knights of St. John then became a military body, sworn to 
defend the Holy Sepulchre to the death, and to make incessant 
war upon infidels. When the Holy City fell into the possession 
of Saladin, the knights settled at Acre (1191). A century later they 
were driven away by the Moslem to Cyprus, and in 13 10, under 
their grand-master Fulk de Villaret, they captured Rhodes and 
some neighbouring islands from the Greek and Moslem pirates, 
and from these strongholds they waged war with success for two 
centuries against the Turks, being now entitled " Knights of 
Rhodes." The Order possessed great wealth from royal and other 
benefactions, and from the spoiling of infidel foes. There were 
three classes of the brethren — knights, chaplains, and serving- 



258 A History of the World 

brothers — the last being the " squires " of the knights in warfare. 
At this time of their greatest prosperity the Hospitallers owned 
many thousands of manors in different parts of Europe. In London, 
their great priory at Clerkenwell was maintained with much state 
until the suppression of religious houses by Henry VIII. The 
Knights Hospitallers had still a long career abroad. In 1523, 
driven from Cyprus by the Turks, they retired for a few years to 
Candia (Crete), and in 1530 they received from the emperor 
Charles V. the gift of Malta and Gozo, with Tripoli on the opposite 
coast of Africa. From Tripoli they were forced away in 155 1 by 
the renowned Barbary corsair Dragut, from whom they sustained 
at Malta a siege of four months in 1565. They defended their 
fortifications with great determination, and finally repulsed their 
assailants with the loss of many thousands of men. The "Knights 
of Malta," as they were now called, declined rapidly in moral worth 
and political importance after the Reformation, and the career of 
the ancient Order practically ended with the surrender of the island 
to the French in 1798, and the confiscation of their lands, about 
the same time, in various European countries. A modern revival, 
with its headquarters at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, is honourably 
distinguished in connection with cottage-hospitals and convalescent 
homes, an ophthalmic hospital at Jerusalem, the street-ambulance 
system, and the organisation of the " Red Cross Society " for the 
aid of the sick and wounded in war. 

The still more famous Knights Templars, so styled from their 
house at Jerusalem, near the site of Solomon's temple, were from 
the first a military Order, founded in n 18 by a Burgundian knight, 
Hugues de Payen, and eight French knights, for the protection 
of poor pilgrims against Moslem attacks. Bernard of Clairvaux 
obtained for them, from the Pope, a formal " Rule," and the 
Order became renowned for valour against the infidels. The 
organisation and vows were like those of the Hospitallers, and 
the mode of life was very strict. A Papal " bull" of 1172 rendered 
the Templars free from episcopal jurisdiction, and accountable 
to the Pope alone. This body of warriors, numbering many 
thousands in the 13th century, were in their best days lions in 
conflict, foremost supporters of Richard of England in the Third 
Crusade. No knight was ever known to shrink in battle, or to 
make dishonourable terms with the Moslem, and the Order 
could boast that, during its two centuries of existence, 20,000 
members had died fighting in Palestine, and that seven out of 22 



The Knights Templars 259 

grand-mnsters had fallen on the battle-field, and five more from 
wounds there received. The seat of the Templars in Palestine 
was Acre, with a stupendous castle whose ruins still exist. The 
accumulation of vast wealth, largely due to the property of those 
who joined the Order, and the special privileges enjoyed, along 
with their exclusive and secret management of affairs, aroused 
great jealousy among both ecclesiastics and laymen, who freely 
accused the Templars not only of pride, but of luxury and gross 
immorality. The end of the Order was to the last degree 
disastrous. An unscrupulous king, Philip le Bel of France, aiming 
at their wealth, sought the aid of the Pope (Clement V.) and 
the Inquisition, and attacked the Order in 1307. The grand- 
master, summoned from Cyprus, and 140 knights, were seized 
at " the Temple," their palace in Paris, and imprisoned, and 
charges of the worst character — rank heresy and blasphemy 
included — were held to be confirmed by confessions wrung from 
victims by the most cruel tortures. Careful modern investigation 
has proved the infamous injustice of the proceedings against the 
Order in France. In Paris alone 36 knights died under torture. 
The doomed victims of a despot and his instruments, composed 
of envious bishops and abbots and an ignorant laity, were subjected 
to a long series of trials before prejudiced judges. In May, 13 10, 
54 knights were slowly burned to death in Paris, refusing to 
make any confession, and the Order was suppressed by a bull in 
1312, with transference of some of its landed property to the Knights 
of St. John. Two years later two chiefs of the body were roasted 
to death in Paris. In England a merciful treatment, by comparison, 
was accorded to the Templars, the last master dying as a prisoner 
in the Tower. The Temple Church in London, consecrated in 
1 185 by Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and splendidly restored, 
at great cost, in 1839-1842, by the Benchers of the Inner and 
Middle Temple, marks the spot, now so greatly changed in the 
character of the buildings and their occupants, where the prior, 
knights, and serving-brethren of the great military Order dwelt, 
in the London of mediaeval times, looking out on the waters of 
the fair broad river. 

The Teutonic Knights had a like origin with the two other 
military Orders, early in the 12th century. In the 13th century 
a body of these knights waged successful war against the heathen 
Wends in Prussia, and before the close of that period the Teutonic 
Order were masters of the territory between the Memel and the 



260 A History of the World 

Vistula, as well as of possessions in Courland and Livonia. They 
began to decline in importance towards the end of the 14th century, 
when their true work — that of forcibly converting the Prussians and 
Lithuanians — was completed. The knights had also been of great 
service in protecting the Hanseatic league of trading towns, and 
in spreading German civilisation through the territory which became 
the Baltic provinces of Russia. The first seat of the Order had been 
at Acre. In 1291 it was transferred to Venice, and a few years 
later to Marienburg, near Danzig. In 14 10 the knights lost 
credit through a terrible defeat from the Poles and Lithuanians, 
and before the close of the 15th century the Order, having now 
removed its seat to Konigsberg, had lost west Prussia, and only 
held east Prussia as a fief of Poland. In 1525 the Order and 
its landed possessions were " secularised," and the grand-master, 
Albert of Brandenburg- Anspach, became hereditary Duke of Prussia 
as a vassal of Poland. In 1809 the Teutonic Knights were finally 
suppressed by Napoleon in all the German states. A branch of 
the Order, left in Austria, was reorganised in 1840, and does service 
in caring for the wounded in war. 

Chivalry has been well described as " an institution which 
both affected the character of the Crusades and received from 
them in return a powerful impulse ; it was one means by which 
the nobles separated themselves from the people, for no one might 
be a knight but a man of high birth." The word properly means 
the usages and qualifications of chevaliers or knights, originally 
" mounted warriors," the word cavalry being another form of the 
same Latin derivative. The landed gentry, or feudal tenants of 
a certain rank, could alone render such service in war, while the 
infantry was composed of plebeians. During the Crusades, prowess 
in war added a personal chivalry to the technical, landed order 
of knighthood, and this, being won by merit alone, was an object 
of ambition to the younger sons of a noble, who accompanied the 
richer barons to war, as their paid comrades on the most honourable 
terms. In this new form, the knight was attended by his "squire," 
a youth of equal birth and similar hopes of plunder, promotion, 
and fame. Archers and men-at-arms completed the retinue. In 
order to prepare a lad for the career of chivalry, he was taken, 
at the age of seven years, into the castle of some baron as a page 
or "varlet," and trained in athletic exercises, with horsemanship 
and the use of weapons, until the age of 14, having also acquired 
from his surrounding of brave knights and noble ladies habits 



Chivalry 

i j he be ame a 

at ion and ceremonies including 

a bath, a n and the holy 

in B white robe, i ted a knight, 

. him to defend the Church, 
in their persons and their honourable 
reputation, to be l'>\al t<> Ins prince, to be the reliever of suff< 

i and wr- mg I he buckli 
"winnin 
the . mlv blessed by the priest .is it lay 

u|k.:. Mil by Ins " dubb 

in the laying <>f the flat *>f a Bword on 

llder. 'I ibrai e with anus 

round the neck, formed the "accolade," and he w.i^ thus 
a knight in the i. I . and of St. Mi 

i> of the I rii 
ritial to the km. r.uter Were I- . 

an>l munificence l ■ • . ■:.. cements to the feudal 
-w.i>, in the best 
to the knight who thus became "disloyal 

as well rrupt 

. and the honourable trust re[ 
in ■ knight's word ^as the source <>t the re! 
in order that 1 I return and procure hi-, ransom. A nol 

lelity in tl t i^ that of King John ol 

n by the rince .11 

nd died there in 1364, in J of G 

he had Ween unable to procure, in his 
ulated sum. Th< 
indulgent treatment <>f 1 » r 1 ^ « > : ■. - r ^ which 
and the mun 

to 11. e > huf privilege of ki I, in 

dent 

1 

ind the n 

lawk 

■ 
in prim i| 1 



260 A History of the World 

Vistula, as well as of possessions in Courland and Livonia. They 
began to decline in importance towards the end of the 14th century, 
when their true work — that of forcibly converting the Prussians and 
Lithuanians — was completed. The knights had also been of great 
service in protecting the Hanseatic league of trading towns, and 
in spreading German civilisation through the territory which became 
the Baltic provinces of Russia. The first seat of the Order had been 
at Acre. In 1291 it was transferred to Venice, and a few years 
later to Marienburg, near Danzig. In 14 10 the knights lost 
credit through a terrible defeat from the Poles and Lithuanians, 
and before the close of the 15th century the Order, having now 
removed its seat to Konigsberg, had lost west Prussia, and only 
held east Prussia as a fief of Poland. In 1525 the Order and 
its landed possessions were " secularised," and the grand-master, 
Albert of Brandenburg- Anspach, became hereditary Duke of Prussia 
as a vassal of Poland. In 1809 the Teutonic Knights were finally 
suppressed by Napoleon in all the German states. A branch of 
the Order, left in Austria, was reorganised in 1840, and does service 
in caring for the wounded in war. 

Chivalry has been well described as " an institution which 
both affected the character of the Crusades and received from 
them in return a powerful impulse ; it was one means by which 
the nobles separated themselves from the people, for no one might 
be a knight but a man of high birth." The word properly means 
the usages and qualifications of chevaliers or knights, originally 
" mounted warriors," the word cavalry being another form of the 
same Latin derivative. The landed gentry, or feudal tenants of 
a certain rank, could alone render such service in war, while the 
infantry was composed of plebeians. During the Crusades, prowess 
in war added a personal chivalry to the technical, landed order 
of knighthood, and this, being won by merit alone, was an object 
of ambition to the younger sons of a noble, who accompanied the 
richer barons to war, as their paid comrades on the most honourable 
terms. In this new form, the knight was attended by his "squire," 
a youth of equal birth and similar hopes of plunder, promotion, 
and fame. Archers and men-at-arms completed the retinue. In 
order to prepare a lad for the career of chivalry, he was taken, 
at the age of seven years, into the castle of some baron as a page 
or " varlet," and trained in athletic exercises, with horsemanship 
and the use of weapons, until the age of 14, having also acquired 
from his surrounding of brave knights and noble ladies habits 



Chivalry 261 

of obedience and a courteous demeanour. At 14 he became a 
squire, and afterwards, with preparation and ceremonies including 
a bath, a night-watch or vigil, confession of sins, and the holy 
communion, he was clad in a white robe, and created a knight, 
always by a knight, with an oath binding him to defend the Church, 
to protect virtuous women both in their persons and their honourable 
reputation, to be loyal to his prince, to be the reliever of suffering 
and the redresser of oppression and wrong. The buckling-on of 
gilt spurs, the origin of the expression "winning his spurs," and 
the girding with a sword solemnly blessed by the priest as it lay 
upon the altar, were followed by kneeling and by his " dubbing " 
or "striking" as a knight in the laying of the flat of a sword on 
his right shoulder. This ceremony, and an embrace with arms 
round the neck, formed the " accolade," and he was thus created 
a knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St. Michael 
the archangel, or of the Three Persons of the Trinity. 

The virtues held essential to the knightly character were loyalty, 
courtesy, and munificence. To break engagements — to the feudal 
lord, to a lady, or to a friend — was, in the best days of chivalry, 
social death to the knight who thus became " disloyal " or 
"recreant." Treachery, the vice of savage as well as of corrupt 
nations, was the vilest of crimes, and the honourable trust reposed 
in a knight's word was the source of the release of a captured foe 
in order that he might return and procure his ransom. A notable 
instance of fidelity in this respect is that of King John of France, 
who, having been taken by the Black Prince at Poitiers in 1356, 
returned to London, and died there in 1364, in John of Gaunt's 
palace of the Savoy, when he had been unable to procure, in his 
own country, the great stipulated sum. The courtesy of chivalry 
brought in warfare an indulgent treatment of prisoners which was 
scarcely known in ancient days, and the munificence required from 
a knight included great hospitality to travellers and bountiful aid 
to men of his own order. The chief privilege of knighthood, in 
the social sense, was the being a member of a distinct European 
class of distinguished persons, with rights and dignities independent 
of any sovereign. Chivalry was of vast use in promoting a sense 
of honour in every form, and the mediaeval times of history show 
many instances of the elevation of character thus developed. In 
lawless days it was of great value to have a class of men, high in 
position, who were bound by oath to display some of the virtues 
which are most surely based upon Christian principle. It is needless 
18 



264 A History of the World 

clad only in a coarse brown woollen tunic, girt with a cord of hemp. 
When he obtained followers and founded his first monastery, he 
made the vows, as in other cases, pledge the monks to chastity, 
poverty, and obedience, but the chief stress was laid on poverty, not 
merely for the members but for the Order. Success of the brethren 
in preaching brought the solemn approval, in 12 16, of Pope 
Innocent III., and the numbers of the Order, called also Gray 
Friars, and Minorites or Lesser Brethren, enormously increased 
before the death of the founder in 1226. They became the source 
of many other religious institutions, including several Orders of nuns. 
The Franciscans had among them many men of eminence in 
theology and philosophy, as Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, 
Alexander of Hales, and Bonaventure ; and the wonderful Roger 
Bacon, who was also a linguist, scientific experimentalist, and skilful 
mechanician, was one of the same great fraternity. They had 
many monasteries in England, where the Friars of this mendicant 
Order did much admirable work in preaching and in the tendance of 
the sick poor during the 13th century. The rule of poverty was 
afterwards laid aside, and wealth and power brought degeneration 
and decay. 

The powerful Dominican Order of preaching Friars derives its 
name from the founder Dominic, a Spanish (Castilian) canon of 
ascetic life, who became a missionary among Mohammedans and 
"heretics" of the Christian Church. In the south -of France he 
laboured amongst the Albigenses, a body of sectarian Christians to 
be hereafter noticed, and in 1215 he founded his society at Toulouse. 
His work of persuasion became degraded, under the influence of 
the fanatical Pope Innocent III., into cruel persecution. Before 
his death in 1221 the Dominicans, devoted to rigid poverty, had 
60 houses or monasteries. In England, where the dress of the 
members gave them the name of " Black Friars," their first founda- 
tion was at Oxford. It was the special object of the Dominicans 
to guard the purity of the faith. The theory of their canonised 
founder, St. Dominic, was that there was no salvation for the 
"heretic" in the next world, and that there must be no mercy in 
this. The Order had a chief part in the work of the detestable 
" Inquisition," of which they were the managers in Italy, Portugal, 
and Spain. In theological matters, the Dominicans, numbering 
amongst their learned "Schoolmen" the famous Albertus Magnus 
and Thomas Aquinas, were the rivals of the Franciscans. 

On a general view, the preaching Friars did much to promote 



The British Isles 265 

the religious influence of the Church, which had declined from the 
disuse of sermons, the ignorance of parish-priests, and the corrupt 
life engendered among monastic Orders by the possession of great 
wealth as landowning corporations. In political matters the sym- 
pathies of the wandering and begging brethren were almost wholly 
with the body of the people against the nobles and the Crown, 
and, as purveyors of news and arousers of feeling, they played an 
important part, especially in England, during the 13th and 14th 
centuries. /The good effected by the monks in the "dark ages" 
comprises the exercise and influence of virtues— such as meekness 
and self-denial and comprehensive almsgiving — in which the laity 
were deficient. They were the " relieving-offlcers " and the phy- 
sicians of the poor. They were the custodians and copyists, in the 
library and the scriptorium or writing-room, of the treasures of 
ancient literature and learning. Extending our view to the mediaeval 
Church at large, we may claim that she. fulfilled a high office on 
behalf of humanity in the shelter which the precincts of an ecclesias- 
tical building afforded to the fugitive, and in the bold stand which 
prelates and priests, abbots and priors, often made against the 
oppressor. | The right of " sanctuary " in a consecrated place, akin 
to the shelter provided in the Jewish " cities of refuge " and in . 
certain temples of ancient Greece, only accorded protection to a 
criminal for a limited time, until some arrangement could be made 
or the first heat of resentment were cooled, and the privilege was 
not granted to any person guilty of sacrilege or of treason. It is 
obvious that, in comparatively lawless times, the refuge provided 
by the Church was often a protection to the innocent. The influ- 
ence of ecclesiastics was also often used in inducing feudal lords, 
in their days of health, or on their death-beds, to emancipate 
their serfs. 



Chapter II. — Northern and Western Europe : the British 
Isles ; Denmark, Sweden, Norway ; France ; Spain ; the 
Byzantine Empire. 

When the conquest of England had been completed in the severe 
suppression of risings in various quarters, William I. (1066-1087) 
showed his wisdom in the measures which he took to consolidate 
his position as sovereign. The land was given to his chief Norman 
followers on feudal tenure, but in the form of manors scattered in 
many distant parts of the country, so that no baron should have 



266 A History of the World 

the power of raising at once a large force of vassals for action 
against the Crown. In 1086 he made the feudality which was now 
firmly established in England more favourable to the king or 
supreme lord, by requiring all landholders, great and small, to 
take an oath of allegiance direct to the sovereign, thus binding 
them to serve him in war against their own lord, or fellow-baron, 
in case he were a rebel. Strong fortresses of stone were built in 
London (the Tower), at Rochester, Windsor, Canterbury, Norwich, 
Hastings, and many other places, and occupied by royal garrisons. 
The great statistical survey of the kingdom, the results of which 
were embodied in Domesday Book, still to be seen in the Public 
Record Office, Fetter Lane, in London, afforded a basis for taxation 
in its details concerning the nature of the tillage, the pastures, the 
mines, mills, fisheries, woods, live-stock, value, and service due from 
owner, in the case of each property, and, in furnishing the number 
of people on each holding, it was a muster-roll of the feudal force. 
The four large earldoms were abolished, and the shire became the 
chief political division, with its principal executive officer in the 
shire-reeve (sheriff), nominated by the sovereign. The lower local 
courts of justice were made subordinate to the king's court. The 
Church was reformed and reorganised under the new Norman 
archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, William's ablest minister and 
adviser; while Normans replaced Englishmen in the sees and 
abbacies. We must specially note the independent attitude assumed 
by the great Norman ruler towards the Papacy. He positively 
refused any homage to the Pope, declaring it to be a thing unknown 
in England. He kept in his own hands the appointment to 
bishoprics, and ordained that no Papal letter, brief, or bull should 
be received in this country, no Papal synod or council held, and 
no bishop appeal to the Papal court in Rome, without the sanction 
of the sovereign of England. It was in the establishment of this 
great centralised, almost absolute royal authority, and its maintenance 
by strong-willed kings for several generations, with little interruption, 
that the Norman Conquest was of vital and lasting benefit to 
England. The elements of society were hammered into a united 
realm. The conquered people sank to a low position — the old 
English landowners into small feudal tenants, the former English 
yeomen into serfs, and their places were taken by Normans from 
beyond the Channel. There was also a considerable influx of 
Norman traders and craftsmen, and, within a century after the 
Conquest, it is estimated that one-eighth of a whole population of 



I Brii I ilea 

00,000 < sorption of th 

:ter the l>attl< 

in t ', made Ihe true m iple, 

i morally l>v the admixture "i .1 
! of a new and n mainly 

. teamed, 
furnished the buil tedrals, the < hief mum. 

. the 1 1 n . the aim 

nmunical ilture in every form 

m II. (I tidier, 

and a rap • rant in his rule, 

-el with Anselm, the excellent archbish 

ilready * 1 rman hisl 

and other matters. Anselm, for hi . left the 

in 1 id not return until the n of the " Red Kin 

Henry I. (n 1 1 ;_; ). Phis able, 6rm, 1 
ruler ptomptly took 1 
on the sudden d is brother in thi . without 

.my supposed right of h brother I duke 

Normandy, whom we have seen in the First 
primogeniture prin :. and 

ind by \u> English subj 
irter, in whi( h the " Law of Edward 
and the abuses and exaction 
Kuh. nglish bj n 

• i royal line Edith, Mai. olm 

I to M 

rt to obtain the crown in not ended in 
[n 1106 H 

ping him in 

nti 11 l tie in w 

id. A quarrel with 

• • >i< h 

with t!. 
in 1 

1 Ml. 



268 A History of the World 

The reign of Stephen (1135-1154) was that of a usurper who, 
through the help of some of the greater barons and the citizens of 
London, set aside the rights of Henry's daughter Matilda (Maud) 
and her young son Henry, by her marriage with Geoffrey Plan- 
tagenet of Anjou. Her claim had been again and again recognised, 
on oath, by the barons of England and Normandy, including Stephen 
himself, who was Henry I.'s nephew. The new king was a brave, 
unprincipled, generous fellow, of delightful manners, never cruel 
to beaten foes. The events of his reign consist chiefly of those 
of a dreadful civil war between the king's adherents and the 
supporters of Maud's claim. In 1138 an invasion from Scotland 
was defeated at the " Battle of the Standard " near Northallerton 
in Yorkshire. The king and Matilda were taken prisoners in 
the course of a struggle which desolated the country, but he was 
exchanged, and she escaped. A renewal of warfare by her son 
Henry was brought to an end by the Treaty of Wallingford (1153), 
which left the crown to Stephen for his life, with remainder to 
Henry. 

Stephen's death in the following year brought to the throne 
of England a really strong man in Henry II. (1154-1189), first 
of the Plantagenet kings. He was at once the ablest and most 
powerful monarch of his time, endowed with a body of wonderful 
activity and strength ; with boundless energy, resolute will, political 
acumen, prompt and fluent speech. He was, at all points, such 
a man of business as is rarely seen, and one capable of an 
excellent choice and use of men to carry out his policy. The 
extent of territory under his control was remarkable — including 
the whole of England ; Normandy and Maine, by inheritance from 
his mother ; Anjou and Touraine, from his father ; and all the 
rest of central and western, and much of southern France, through 
his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, divorced consort of Louis VII. 
of France. Ruling thus from the borders of Scotland to the 
Pyrenees, he was as much a French as an English sovereign, 
and the greater part of his time was passed beyond the Channel. 
The first claim of Henry II. to notice lies in his foundation of 
the judicial system of England. In the set of decrees or ordinances 
called the Assize of Clarendon, from the place in Wiltshire where 
they were issued in 1166, he established in each shire the body 
called "grand jury," and formed the nucleus of the "petty" 
or ordinary jury in appointing 12 men to discover the truth 
in judicial cases by inquiry into particulars. Ten years later, 



The British Isles 

Northampl tern 

riminal causes in 
• the kingdom at ttii I 

lishii ;l tumults under 

nm the banditti who roamed the country ; he expelled 
the foreign ii, s who had been l>r<>. 

.il war; and h<- pulled <!"\wi hundred 
ties who had used the 

In or.!, r tO I 

the kin^ established a feudal 
; personal s< 
Is in the I I lal tenants of th< I thus lost 

t the pra< ti< e of obtained 

r the hii aim disbando 

. 
In regard to the affairs of the Church, the reign of Henry II. 

William the Conquei 
tablishraent ol 
the trial irehmen, including civil 

i tituti in was I 

an able, ami 

1 rch bishop of 

1 ry. He had i cellor, been II 

ly opponent and a thorn in the 
the rights of the 
I I the Constitui 

Ion, in i il, oi Parliament i ■ • 

trol of i!i 
■ 
< rime, could be tri« d in the I to the 

Constitutions, but he then 
from his proi 
him, in i 

i 

he I 

I 



270 A History of the World 

to Henry as vassal for his country. His latest years were full of 
trouble, due to the rebellion of his son Richard, who joined Philip 
Augustus of France, and made successful war on his father. The 
defection of John, the youngest, best-loved son, broke the strong 
man's spirit, and brought him to his death in 1189. 

The character and career of Richard I. (1189-1199) have been 
practically given in connection with the Third Crusade. His life 
as king was almost wholly passed out of England, and his subjects 
knew little of the brave feudal warrior who ruled them save through 
his lawless and enormous exactions to procure money for warfare. 
Affairs were managed at home by the " Justiciar," or chief minister 
in that age, William of Longchamps, bishop of Ely, and by the able 
Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury. The claim to homage 
from the Scottish kings was sold back to William the Lion, the 
sovereign defeated in Henry II. 's reign. During his warfare with 
Philip Augustus of France, Richard built, as a defence for his 
Norman frontier, the noblest fortress of feudal times, the famous 
Chateau Gaillard (" Saucy Castle ") on the Seine, near Les Andelys. 
Richard, like Charles XII. of Sweden, met his death before "a 
petty fortress," the castle of Chaluz, near Limoges, held by a rebellious 
vassal, if not by " a dubious hand." His generous forgiveness of the 
archer who shot the arrow which caused his death through gangrene 
shows the best side of his character. He bequeathed the whole of 
his dominions to his brother John, and was buried at his father's 
feet in the abbey-church of Fontevrault, near Saumur. 

In the reign of John (1199-1216) we have that of a sovereign 
who, wicked in all respects almost beyond rivalry in ancient, 
mediaeval, or modern days — a man of whom a contemporary wrote, 
after the king's death, the terrible words " hell itself is defiled by 
the fouler presence of John " — by his very wickedness and folly 
was the cause of inestimable benefit to the country which he ruled. 
He was a man of cunning policy, without real foresight, and of 
ability in war, but false, cruel, shameless, profligate, and tyrannical 
beyond measure. In 1204 Normandy was overrun, after capture of 
the great fortress Chateau Gaillard, by Philip Augustus of France, 
and Anjou, Maine, and Touraine were occupied by the same 
monarch, after sentence of deprivation passed on John for his 
probable murder of his nephew Arthur, duke of Brittany, accepted 
as feudal lord of those territories. The only French possessions 
ultimately left to the English king were the Channel Islands and 
a part of the province of Aquitaine, in the south-west, between the 



The British Isles 271 

Garonne and the Pyrenees. The loss of Normandy and adjacent 
territories at this time had effects of great importance in our history. 
It was a long further step in consolidating the nation. The Norman 
nobles had to make their choice between being vassals, for French 
territory, of Philip Augustus, or English subjects, possessed only 
of lands in this country. Those who elected to remain in the 
island instead of on the continent soon came to regard the conquered 
English as their countrymen, and they had a common interest with 
them against both an oppressive king and the foreign favourites 
from Aquitaine and Poitou who filled the royal court. From the 
first John had disgusted the barons by his illegal exactions and 
other misconduct, and he was soon embroiled with Pope Inno- 
cent III., who compelled him, after long resistance, to receive, as 
archbishop of Canterbury, the learned and pious Cardinal Stephen 
Langton, an Englishman, elected by the Canterbury monks. The 
powers wielded by the Papacy are well illustrated in the " Interdict " 
which ultimately forced John to yield. In 1208 the realm, under 
the above ecclesiastical penalty, designed to awaken the national 
conscience to the nature of the sovereign's crime in resisting the 
Pope, was deprived of all the solemnities of public worship, but not, 
as has been supposed, of the bare forms of baptism, marriage, burial, 
confirmation, ordination, and the eucharist. If John had been a 
different kind of man and ruler, he might have defied the Pope 
to the last, but, devoid of friends alike among nobles and people, 
he was helpless in face of probable deposition. As it was, he held 
out for five years, until 12 13, when he consented to receive Langton 
as archbishop, and did homage to Pandulf, the Papal legate, 
representing Innocent, as vassal to the Papacy, paying tribute or 
rent for the holding of his kingdom. 

It was the sense of shame caused by this ignominious surrender, 
due entirely to the king's useless obstinacy, that finally banded the 
Church, the barons, and the people against the sovereign. At a 
great meeting held at St. Paul's Cathedral, Stephen Langton 
produced a copy of the Charter granted by Henry I., and the barons 
resolved that John should be forced to renew the undertakings of 
that document. They had already refused to follow him on an 
expedition to France, and the king, in his rage and despair, formed 
a league against Philip Augustus, including the count of Flanders and 
Otto IV. of Germany, who had a rival in the field as emperor and 
had been excommunicated by Innocent. The united forces, John's 
mercenaries and his allies, were completely defeated, in 12 14, 



272 A History of the World 

by Philip at Bouvines, a few miles south-east of Lille, then in 
Flanders, and John returned in a miserable plight to England. 
The barons met in arms in London, and in June, 12 15, compelled 
the king to sign the Great Charter of English liberties, securing 
the personal and political and financial rights of the clergy, the 
nobles, and the commons. The main point of modern interest 
was the financial clause which settled that no tax should be laid 
on knights or barons except with consent of the Great Council, 
the only parliament of that time, which had succeeded the 
Witenagemot (" meeting of wise men '') or Witan of early England, 
and was, like that body, composed of barons, bishops, and abbots, 
with no representative or elective character. Nevertheless, that 
body stood for the whole people, and the clause in the Charter 
involved the principle of " no taxation without consent of the 
taxed." The provisions of the Charter were often violated, but never 
allowed to become obsolete, being kept constantly to the front by 
the practice of the barons and the House of Commons, in com- 
pelling sovereigns — notably Henry III., Edward I., Edward III., 
Richard II., and Henry IV. — to solemnly ratify and confirm the 
document, before grants of money to the Crown were voted. The 
right of trial by jury for serious offences was involved in another 
clause. The immediate sequel was civil war. Innocent III., well 
pleased with John's submission to the Papacy, declared the Charter 
null and void, as signed on compulsion, and a French party among 
the barons pronounced the crown forfeited by John, offering it 
to Louis, son of Philip. That foreign prince came over with an 
army, landing at Dover in May, 1216, but Dover Castle was held 
for the king by Hubert de Burgh, while John, with an army of 
foreign mercenaries, sped through the country wreaking vengeance 
on the barons who, after the signing of the Charter, had imprudently 
disbanded their men. The sudden death of the wicked king, from 
fever, in October, 12 16, was a deliverance from a position of great 
difficulty and danger for the English people. 

The new king, John's eldest son, was Henry III. (1216-1272), 
only nine years of age, and rule was in the hands of William 
Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and Hubert de Burgh, the "Justiciar." 
These able and vigorous men drove out the French, Pembroke 
routing the land-forces at Lincoln, and De Burgh destroying the 
fleet off Dover. After Pembroke's death in 1219, the Justiciar kept 
good order, until Henry assumed power in 1227, forcing the barons 
and foreign leaders of John's mercenaries to give up the castles 



The Brit I 

I I I my III w.i- .1 m. in of mild, Wl 
• mischievous to the country in what he i 
to Ik.- done. to learning and l tit to the 

Pope, dependent on t n favourites of himself and his 

• Poitou and of I. 

n behalf, and all 
the I plunder I 

preteni es. Huben 

chief n tad to d the 

■ tf W i!i> h( " :. I his man 
• rule, thl 
the mil ■.. ound RJ »r of 

rchbishoprii . A chiel I the 

• Papal injust 
the learned ami patriotic bishop of Lincoln, an intimate frien 

. .1 Frani 
Montfort, earl of l iman !>y 

birth, but at: I glishman it . ■• three 

I friar, m mmon p 

:i. firmly unit t Papal 

[I i Adam Marsh that th< i ame 

known to the reform • the 

nst the I I >f the 

urn, onl) ne and i 

. ; re lai to I 

trfare in those territoi I 

• hout present wart 

ment held at 
i 
• 

the mt! . I i.- 

I 

■ 



274 A History of the World 

all future legislation, and in 1341 the Commons sat apart from the 
Barons or Lords, and henceforth there was a Parliament of two 
Houses. In 1354, also, under Edward III., the petitions of the 
Commons for changes in the law, with the assent of the Lords, 
ceased to be liable to alteration by the sovereign, and the present 
form of statutes or Acts of Parliament thus arose. Under Plantagenet 
kings, in days when there was no standing army to coerce the 
people, we see thoroughly established the following restraints on 
royal authority : that the king, without Parliament, could make no 
law, nor raise money legally by taxation ; and that the House of 
Commons could impeach, i.e. accuse as criminals before the Lords, 
as the highest judicial body in the realm, any evil counsellors 
(ministers) of the sovereign, and, on proof of the case, ensure their 
removal and punishment. It is here that we have the enormous 
difference, as regards popular control of the Crown, between England 
and all foreign nations of the later mediaeval period. Under feudal 
influences, in those other countries, the national assemblies, re- 
presenting the different classes of freemen — the nobles, the clergy, 
and the commons, or general body of citizens in the towns — which 
had arisen in western and central Europe, lost all power. The 
monarchs became absolute, partly through taking advantage of 
quarrels between the nobles and the commons, and, when they 
became the heads of standing armies of trained men, instead of a 
mere feudal militia, they were able to defy popular opinion. The 
firm maintenance in England, on the whole, of the constitutional 
right of withholding money, combined with the insular position 
which rendered a standing force less needful to prevent invasion, 
made political liberty abide here, when it had vanished from France 
and Germany and Spain, and in some measure from the northern 
Teutonic countries or Scandinavia. The power of Parliament in 
this country was signally shown in 1327 and 1399, when it was used 
to dethrone and replace sovereigns. 

Of Ireland and Scotland during this period there is little to 
record. In 1158 Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspear, the only 
Englishman that ever filled the Papal chair) issued a bull empower- 
ing Henry II. to conquer Ireland for the Papal See, in the interests 
of law, order, and civilisation. In n 66 some nobles of South 
Wales, Robert Fitz-Stephen and Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, 
surnamed Strongbow, went over with a force of knights, men-at-arms, 
and Welsh archers, and easily routed any natives that opposed 
them. Dublin was taken by surprise, Wexford and Waterford by 



Tht cs 

[| ih ruler, 
ime "kin I I aster," and in 1171 Henry II. went over and 
• 

nominal. . ina held 

■ rritory near Dublin, Waterford, 
under thi the ] the Pale, 

land. B( yond these limits the tri 
rent on, .m«I the n thin the Pale passed t h « i r time 

in ii ! . and in quarrelling 

her. In I irroundings, the Bo-called 1 

df-wild them- 
rule. Kin^ John, in a 
on with much skill in 1210, f< 

I by 
I 1 and the " m in of t 
I I. (1124-11 idal rule, and 

,rl <>( Huntingdon in 1 
\\ e h . ■ 

Of his 11 
rper S ihen. 1 1 
hurch, ai 
an 1 Meli William the I 

n in lus 
II. 1 :. in 

r II. ( 1 J 1 1 1 : . 

f Henry III. ol I I. Und< r A. tand< r III 

erful 

■ 

■ 

1 

1 



276 A History of the World 

the frontier, and Norman castles were built in the centre and south. 
Under his successor Rufus, a great rising of the people won back 
much of the conquered territory, and it was not until the next reign 
that any firm hold was obtained, when Normans and English settled 
in Pembroke and Glamorgan. The popular Bards, by their songs 
appealing to patriotic spirit, made a great stir at this time, and the 
Welsh were strongly roused thereby. Under Henry II. there was 
again a national gathering in arms, and the king's forces were 
repeatedly beaten by those of the " Lords of Snowdon," as certain 
chieftains in the north were styled. King John waged war in 121 1 
with success in South Wales, but all his work was undone when his 
energies were taxed in conflict with the English barons, and the 
Britons of the western region became united and free under a 
prince named Llewellyn, who ruled from 1194 to 1246. He had 
been a vassal to John, but the Papal excommunication of the king 
put an end to all allegiance, and the capture of Shrewsbury was 
followed by the expulsion of other royal garrisons in the south of the 
country. Another Llewellyn, ruling from 1246 to 1283, conquered 
Glamorgan, and under Henry III. had the control of the country 
as " Prince of Wales," a title yielded to him on condition of formal 
vassalship to the English king. 

In dealing with the Scandinavian kingdoms, we pass, for the 
sake of clearness, beyond the bounds of the period under review, and 
trace the history down to the close of the 14th century. In 
Denmark, under the feudal system, a powerful nobility arose, and 
the free people were reduced to the condition of serfs. Waldemar I. 
(1157-1182) conquered the Wends of Pomerania and Mecklenburg, 
and added Norway to his dominions. His son and successor, 
Cnut VI., went beyond his father, in throwing off allegiance to the 
emperor Frederick I. (Barbarossa), and his brother, Waldemar II. 
(1202-1241), surnamed "the Conqueror," had great success in the 
earlier part of his reign, subduing so much of north Germany and 
the Wendish territory as to make the Baltic a kind of Danish sea. 
These conquests were, however, rapidly lost through the king's 
treacherous capture by a German vassal-prince, when he was 
forced to give up all territory south of the Elbe and in the Slav or 
Wendish land to the east. Papal power interfered to annul this 
involuntary renunciation, but Waldemar was unable to regain the 
territory, and of all his conquests there remained only the island of 
Riigen, with a few places on the mainland of Germany and Prussia. 
Great strife followed his unwise division of the kingdom among his 



Denmark, Sweden, and Norway 277 

sons, and the country fell into a condition of weakness and misery. 
Before the middle of the 14th century, one of the kings made 
concessions to the nobles and the clergy which crippled the royal 
power for centuries. Ecclesiastics and their feudal tenants could 
only be tried in Church-courts, and the bishops were, as regarded 
offences, only under Papal jurisdiction. The property and persons 
of the clergy were freed from taxation. The nobles were not bound 
to follow the king to war beyond the limits of the realm, and the 
declaration of war itself depended on the consent of nobles and 
clergy. Legislation was based on the consent of every class in the 
national Diet or parliament, and the rights of all freemen against 
unjust imprisonment were secured. Under Waldemar III. (1340- 
1375), some recovery of lost territory was made, but then came war 
with Sweden, the powerful Hanseatic League, and other rivals, 
and in 1370 the League gained the concession of great commercial 
privileges. His grandson Olaf, already king of Norway in succession 
to his father Hakon or Haco, was a minor, and Denmark and 
Norway were well ruled under the regency of Margaret, his mother, 
who became queen of both countries, by election of the estates of 
the realms, on her young son's death in 1387. In the following 
year this able woman accepted the offer of the crown of Sweden, 
where the king had been deposed by his revolted subjects, and in 
1397 the Union of Calmar brought the three countries into formal 
political connection. 

In Sweden, for 200 years, from the middle of the nth to 
the middle of the 13th century, there was almost constant war 
between the Svea, inhabitants of the lake-region, who clung to 
heathenism for a long period, and the Goths of the south. During 
this struggle the free peasants lost their rights, and a body of warlike 
nobles arose with exclusive privileges, having control of the Diet 
or national assembly, and making royal authority merely nominal. 
In the 1 2th century, under Erik IX., surnamed "the Saint," the 
Swedes were converted to Christianity, and the archbishopric of 
Upsala was founded in 1163. It was zeal for religion that induced 
this king to overrun and annex most of Finland, which was under 
the rule of the Swedish sovereigns until the 19th century. Stockholm 
was founded in 1255. The animosity between the Svea (Swedes) 
and the Goths began to subside under King Waldemar (1 250-1 275), 
and they settled down by degrees into an united people. Much 
trouble came from the turbulent nobles who, in alliance with the 
powerful ecclesiastics, oppressed the people and treated the king 
19 



278 A History of the World 

as naught. There was fairly strong and good government under 
Magnus I. (1279-1290) and Torkel Knutsson, regent (1290-1306) 
for a young king. Then came tyranny when the sovereign assumed 
power, until his death in 13 19, and the long reign of another 
Magnus who waged useless wars abroad and played the tyrant at 
home. On his deposition in 1363 the crown was given to his 
nephew Albert of Mecklenburg, who, unable to cope with the 
disorderly nobles, imported German troops and favourites, and 
unjustly taxed the nation for their support. We have seen the 
ending of this state of affairs with the Union of Calmar, in 1397. 
The almost ceaseless internal discord of the 13th and 14th centuries 
prevented all progress in civilisation. Tillage was neglected; 
literature, learning, and the arts of industry scarcely existed ; and 
even the higher classes, the nobles and ecclesiastics, were devoid 
of all mental culture at a time when, as we shall see, progress in 
this respect was taking place in the chief countries of Europe. 

The history of Norway during this period presents little of interest 
beyond what has been elsewhere noticed. The country prospered 
during a period of peace following the death of Harold Hardraada 
in battle against the English Harold in 1066. Early in the 
12th century, the interests of the Church were promoted by king 
Sigurd (1103-1130), and towns began to have importance. Then 
came above a century of disastrous internal strife amongst three 
parties — the nobles, the higher Churchmen and their supporters, and 
the " nationalists," who had the best of the struggle in the end. 
Peace came at last during the long reign of the Haco who died at 
Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, in 1263, on his return from his defeat 
at Largs in Ayrshire. Under his son Magnus (1 263-1 280) the 
laws were first put into a written form, and in 1266 the Hebrides 
were given up to Scotland. We have seen the union of the crown 
with that of Sweden early in the 14th century, and the Union of 
Calmar in 1397 in the days of the excellent queen Margaret of 
Denmark. 

In France, under Louis VI. (1108-1137), the sovereign found 
himself, on accession, hemmed in on all sides by feudal lords in all 
respects as powerful and influential as their suzerain. With their 
fortress-castles as strongholds, these robber-nobles plundered 
merchants and pilgrims on the highways, defiant of royal safe 
conducts, and brute force overrode the claims of order, jus-tice, and 
national union. In the inevitable struggle which ensued, the king 
had the aid of the associations of a municipal character which had 



France 



279 



arisen in towns for the sake of mutual protection against ecclesiastical 
and lay oppressors. This movement had developed itself, in the 
north of the country, at Cambrai, Beauvais, Noyon, Le Mans, 
Saint Quentin, Laon, Soissons, Amiens, and other places. The 
former serfs who had become hereditary owners of portions of land 
had, in like manner, organised communes or parishes. Both these 
elements of a new society placed their militia-forces at the service 
of the Crown, and, with the able Suger, abbot of St. Denis, as his 
minister, Louis VI. effected a decided increase of the royal power. 
His son Louis VII. (1 137-1180) was also aided in government by 
the prudent and conscientious Suger, a master in finance, who had 
sole charge of affairs during the king's absence on the Second 
Crusade. The country lost much in the transfer to Henry II. of 
England, through Louis' divorce of his wife Eleanor, of her great 
territories in the south and south-west, and it was in revenge for 
this that the French sovereign harassed his English rival by 
encouraging his sons in rebellion. The communal movement was 
fostered by the granting of many charters, and there was a marked 
increase of trade, industry, and population in the towns, with the 
cultivation of lands previously barren, and the clearing of much 
forest-growth. 

The chief " maker of France " as a powerful and united realm 
was a man of whom much has been seen in these pages — Philip II. 
or Philip Augustus (1180-1223), one of the ablest of all the French 
sovereigns, unfettered by scruples and by no means sympathetic 
in character, but a strong and sagacious statesman. It was he 
who made an end of the feudal system by the watchful energy 
which enabled him to outwit and master the barons. Much 
feudal territory in the north was won by conquest. Artois fell 
to the king by inheritance. The duke of Burgundy and the 
count of Chalons were forced to submit. The success of Philip 
against John, and the great growth of French territory thereby, 
have been above recorded. Towards the end of the long and 
successful reign, the victory of Bouvines (12 14) over Otto IV. 
of Germany, John of England, and the count of Flanders, crowned 
the successes of Philip. This very important event, without 
gaining fresh territory, was a signal warning to all the more 
ambitious and disorderly nobles. The French historian Guizot 
has described it as "the work of king and people; of barons, 
knights, burghers, and peasants of Ile-de-France, of Orleanais, 
of Picardy, of Normandy, of Champagne, and of Burgundy," and 



2 8o A History of the World 

he justly declares that " this union of different classes and of 
different populations in a sentiment, a contest, and a triumph 
shared in common, was a decisive step in the organisation and 
unity of France. The victory of Bouvines marked the commence- 
ment of the time at which men might speak, and did speak, by one 
single name, of ' the French.' The nation in France and the 
kingship in France rose on that day out of and above the feudal 
system." The victorious king had a grand reception from the 
people of the districts through which he passed on his return to 
Paris, carrying in his train the wounded and fettered count of 
Flanders, the late powerful, now finally disabled, foe of his suzerain. 
The reign of Philip Augustus was also marked by the first sign 
of the revolt of free thought against the Papacy and the Church, 
and by the first armed crusade against " heretics," as contrasted 
with the movement against Saracenic or Turkish " infidels." The 
monstrous cruelty displayed by the champions of " orthodoxy " 
shows the intolerant spirit of mediaeval days. We must first note 
the difference in point of civilisation between the people to the 
north and those to the south of the Loire. In the north, the 
inhabitants, largely of Teutonic origin, were, apart from Normandy, 
of uncultivated character, with little commerce, literature, or luxury. 
In the southern region, the country called Languedoc {i.e. the pays 
de Langue d'Oc, because the people there spoke the Provencal 
dialect, the Romance or Romanised language in which oc was used 
instead of out for " yes " ), there was a poetical literature of high 
development in the lyric verse of the trouveres or troubadours, and 
a flourishing commerce was carried on, by merchants from 
the Eastern empire, at Toulouse and Narbonne. This region, 
singularly favoured by nature in scenery and soil, was in the 
1 2th century the most flourishing and civilised part of western 
Europe. Wealthy cities, each a little republic, and stately castles, 
each with its own brilliant little court, were scattered among the 
vineyards and corn-fields. In this fruitful land, chivalry had 
assumed its softest, least warlike, and most entrancing form, 
associated with art and letters, courtesy and love. Tolerance of 
spirit had come through familiar intercourse with the best repre- 
sentatives of Islam, the Moors of Spain, and a welcome was 
given to new doctrines introduced by the Greek traders along 
with the drugs and silks of the East. The people became 
" heretical," or alien from the belief of the Catholic Church in 
various points, as the faith was laid down by Popes and Councils. 



The Papacy 

itray in tl m, when 

relate like Innocent III. was the I hurch. I 

able in. m, who reai hed his i salted position in 

to the I: 

Spiritual [) >W< r. \ , the 

•ns, he l>.i«l gained additional territory in central 

I li to interfere with foreign sovereigns, exercising 

. I their su of interdict and 

I rermany, 
John • Philip Learned, pure in life, 

he w Jinarian ol He and his instru- 

■ 
•ist the b '1 holders, of false beliefs, 

numbers of the people in 
held m such abhorrence th than a pi a proverbial 

phra to the Papacj med formidable when the 

• transalpii de all re 

,i positioi . 
in, whence the poison of their b< <:_;i)t 

\k- freely Iran I la , t by Dominic, 

leal with the " All 
d from tli> town of AH.i, north-east of 
. til, and a crisis came \s!i 
f To id VI., se» med to be favouring the 

ileman of his household, in i :? ■ s, murd 
I • then appealed to the 

1 . hich in 1 201; laui linst 

north of the Loire, headed by 
n <:• M mil irt, father of our earl 

\s.irri>>r 

fell in one da) . m 

Kill 
1 will ki 

I \ 1 1 of loulou 
in which tl. 



282 A History of the World 

regular tribunal at Toulouse, with members selected from the 
Dominican Order, and, as is well known, this institution became, 
in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the most terrible instrument 
of Papal despotism. 

Under Louis IX. (St. Louis) (i 226-1270) wise government was 
exercised by the king's mother, the charming, good, and intellectual 
Blanche of Castile, as regent, during the king's minority and then 
his absence in the East, where we have seen him in the Sixth 
Crusade. Many reforms were made by the sovereign. Judicial 
duels (" wager of battle ") were suppressed, and the powers of feudal 
jurisdiction were limited by a right of appeal, in all cases, to the 
royal court. The authority of the Crown was augmented by the 
transformation of the communes into " royal cities," dependent 
upon the sovereign, but governed by mayors, councillors, and 
other officials chosen by the burghers. 

In Spain we find Alfonso VIII. of Castile assuming power in 
1 1 70, and marrying Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England. 
His wife inherited much of her father's force of character, and 
greatly aided her husband, a man of amiable character, styled 
"the Good" by the monkish chroniclers, chiefly by reason of his 
loyalty to the cause of the Church, in behalf of which he issued 
a decree exempting all ecclesiastics from every kind of tax. He 
was, however, zealous also for the good of his subjects at large. 
In 1 195 he had to encounter a great host of the Almohades from 
Africa, whence they ruled the Spanish possessions of the Moors, 
and the Christians suffered one of their greatest defeats at Alarcos, 
near Eadajoz, losing thousands of men and vast spoils. The king, 
rash as a general but valiant as a soldier, was barely restrained from 
seeking death by plunging into the thick of the infidels when the 
rout began. The Mohammedans thus recovered much of the lost 
territory, and were again masters of Madrid, Salamanca, and 
other important towns. Alarm was excited in Europe, when the 
largest infidel army yet seen in Spain was brought over from Africa, 
composed of Egyptians, negroes, Nubians, Persians, and other 
contingents from Asia and Africa. Innocent 111. proclaimed a 
new Crusade, and the archbishop of Toledo, a man equally dis- 
tinguished in warfare and in learning, went about the Continent 
seeking help from Christian princes. A hearty response was made, 
and many French and English knights marched for the scene of 
the new holy war. Navarre and Aragon gave help, and the king 
of Castile, with his allies, came upon the Mohammedans in the 



Spain 283 

Sierra Morena, the range dividing Castile from Andalusia, amidst 
some small upland valleys, surrounded by trees and rocks, called 
Las Navas de Tolosa. There, on July 16th, 12 12, a great and 
decisive battle was fought. Alfonso, with the choicest of the Castilian 
cavaliers, led the vanguard and the centre, with the archbishops 
of Toledo and Narbonne, and other warlike prelates. The infidels 
were led by a Mohammed, with a scimitar in one hand and the 
Koran in the other. The furious strife went on all day, the 
Christians being enormously outnumbered. The Templars in the 
front were destroyed to the last man. Alfonso and the archbishop 
of Toledo bore themselves like heroes, but the Churchman was 
the better general, from his cooler head, and when the king, in 
despair, wished to rush into the thick of the foe, the prelate restored 
the fight, and made dispositions which led to complete victory. The 
enemy, embarrassed by their own numbers, lost many tens of 
thousands of men, and the power of the Mohammedans in Spain 
never recovered from the blow. The Christians took one city after 
another, and in 1235 the Andalusian Moors, weary of their African 
masters, drove the Almohades entirely out of Spain. Alfonso VIII. 
died in 1214, leaving the country in Christian hands from the Bay 
of Biscay to the Sierra Morena, and from Barcelona to Lisbon. In 
1230 Fernando, son of Berengaria, sister of Alfonso VIII., and 
of the king of Leon, united under his rule the two states of Castile 
and Leon, destined henceforth to be no more separated, and to 
play the chief part in the complete and final deliverance of the 
country from the Moors. Between 1238 and 1260 Fernando III. 
and his successor, in alliance with the king of Aragon, a state 
which had been steadily growing in power, conquered the splendid 
and renowned Cordova, with Valencia, Murcia, and Seville, and 
Mohammedan rule was confined to Granada, cr the country about 
the Sierra Nevada and the sea-coast from Gibraltar to Almeria. 
Even there the Moorish king, though he had many thousands of 
warriors at his command, was tributary to Castile, and there was 
little warfare for a long period between the rivals. At the close 
of the 13th century, Granada had taken the place of Cordova as 
the centre of Moorish civilisation in the sciences and arts, and the 
famous Alhambra, already mentioned, arose in its glory. 

In the Byzantine Empire, we left Alexius Comnenus on his 
accession to the throne in 10S1. He found himself confronted 
in the East by the Seljuk Turks, and in the West by the Normans. 
They had already deprived the Eastern Empire of Calabria and 



284 A History of the World 

Apulia in Italy, and were now, under the famous Robert Guiscard, 
about to assail the possessions east of the Adriatic. In June, 1081, 
Guiscard and his men laid siege to Durazzo, the fortress guarding 
the coast of Epirus. Alexius hurried to its relief with an army 
comprising the imperial guard of Varangians, the Russian, English, 
and Danish mercenaries who had well served previous emperors. 
The rest were auxiliaries of Servian and other races, and regular 
troops from Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, the sole remnant 
of the once extensive Greek Empire. Guiscard and his Normans 
inflicted a severe defeat on their enemy, annihilating the Varangians, 
routing all the rest, and nearly capturing Alexius himself. Other 
defeats followed, but one victory for the emperor, and the death 
of Guiscard in 1085, put an end to the Norman trouble. Next 
came the Crusaders on their way to Palestine, and, as we have 
seen, their efforts made the Seljuks harmless for a century to come. 
At this time Constantinople began to decline as a place of trade, 
when the Venetians and the Genoese occupied the seaports of 
Syria, and conducted their business at Tyre or Acre rather than 
on the Bosphorus, and this change swept away much of the 
imperial revenue. John II. (1118-1143), son of Alexius, was a 
prudent and economical ruler, and a good commander in war, and 
he won back much of the coast of Asia Minor from the Turks. 
Manuel, his son and successor (1143-1180), was a great and 
successful fighter, adored by his troops for his fierce courage and 
untiring energy as a cavalry-officer. Servia was overrun ; the king 
of Hungary was forced to submit, and the Normans of Sicily were 
repulsed when they invaded Greece. The powerful Venice was 
defeated at sea, but her privateers almost ruined the remaining 
commerce of Constantinople, and the fearful cost of the constant 
warfare made the decay of the empire still more rapid. All was 
neglected except the army. The civil service was disordered ; 
roads and bridges, docks and harbours, were left untended ; and 
on the death of Manuel the house of Comnenus practically came 
to an end as rulers. 

Under Isaac and Alexius Angelus (1185-1204), both incapable 
of stemming the tide, complete military and financial disorder 
appeared. The mercenaries were in a chronic state of mutiny 
from lack of pay. Bulgaria and Cyprus were lost, and the crowning 
disaster came when the men of the Fourth Crusade made their 
appearance at Constantinople. The Danes and English of the 
Varangian Guard repulsed the attack of the French on the land -works., 



The Byzantine Empire 285 

but the sea-wall was stormed by the Venetians from their galleys, 
urged on by their blind Doge, Henry Dandolo, and the city suffered 
much from fire kindled by the Crusaders who had thus turned aside 
from the professed object of their expedition. The conquerors then 
wrung a heavy subsidy out of the emperor, who melted down the 
golden lamps and silver candelabra of the church of St. Sophia, 
and removed the jewelled images and reliquaries of every church 
in the city. In January, 1204, this sacrilege caused a revolt of 
the citizens and troops. The Crusaders within the walls were 
slain or driven out, and an officer named Alexius Ducas became 
ruler of an empire without a serviceable army, destitute of a fleet, 
and devoid of a coin in the treasury. He was a man of energy and 
resource, and raised some money by confiscating the property of 
leading citizens. The nobles and people were forced to man the 
walls, and the payment of some arrears to the troops enabled him 
to take the field with a body of cavalry. The sea-wall was strength- 
ened, and provided with military engines, the rude artillery of the 
age, and then the Crusaders, in April, 1204, made their second 
assault on the imperial city. The attack on the sea-wall was 
defeated with loss, but Dandolo and the Venetians, a few days later, 
effected a lodgment at one point. Much of the emperor's army 
then dispersed, and the mutiny of the Varangians rendered him 
helpless. The Crusaders were thus in possession of the place 
without more fighting, and, with the slaughter of some thousands 
of unarmed citizens, Constantinople was deliberately pillaged. All 
outrages due to lust and avarice were perpetrated, and the soldiers 
of the Cross behaved like mere fiends, defiling the sanctuaries, while 
the clergy who accompanied the army devoted themselves to 
seizing all the holy bones and relics in the church-treasuries. This 
atrocious villainy caused the destruction of many works of ancient 
literature, and of enormous numbers of the monuments of ancient 
Greek art in the palaces and squares. These priceless works in 
bronze and brass were melted down to make coins, and the whole 
horrible scene of Vandalism amply justified the assertion of a Greek 
writer and eye-witness that " the Franks (French) behaved far worse 
than Saracens." Such was the inglorious inauguration of the 
"Latin Empire" at Constantinople, by which Count Baldwin of 
Flanders became Eastern emperor, with a capital half-destroyed by 
conflagration, and all of it clean-swept from cellar to attic by pillage. 
The new ruler received Thrace, and some provinces in Asia which 
were still in Turkish possession. The Venetians had Crete, the 



286 A History of the World 

Ionian Islands, the ports on the west coast of Greece, most of the 
^Egean Islands, and the land about the entrance of the Dardanelles. 
Thus was gratified their commercial ambition, in the holding of 
the good harbours and the strong posts on the' seaboard. Boniface, 
marquis of Montferrat, held, on feudal tenure under Baldwin, 
Macedonia Thessaly, and the inland parts of Epirus. A Venetian 
prelate became " Patriarch " of Constantinople, and the union of the 
Eastern and Western Churches was thus, for a time, effected. 

The " Latin Empire " had a miserable and ignominious existence 
of nearly 60 years. It was like a sickly child, doomed to death 
from innate feebleness, and its lease of life depended from the first 
upon the unrivalled strength of the fortifications of the capital. In 
the hands of the French conquerors, Constantinople could not be 
assailed with effect on the land side, and the Venetian fleet was its 
defence by sea. The new ruler quickly found that he could not 
possess himself of his nominal territory outside the city. The 
Bulgarian hordes, in overwhelming numbers, defeated his troops 
near Adrianople, and Baldwin's capture was followed by his execution 
in 1205, after one year of imperial office. His brother Henry, 
who succeeded, was always on his defence to the north and south, 
and on his death in 1216 the empire practically consisted of a narrow 
strip of territory on the north of the Propontis (Sea of Marmara), 
stretching from Gallipoli to Constantinople. Boniface of Montferrat, 
in 1207, lost his life in battle with the Bulgarians, and a few years 
later the whole of that territory came into the hands of a Greek 
despot of Epirus. Other little Latin states had been founded by 
Crusaders in different parts of Greece, and we find a " Duke of 
Athens " ruling Attica and Bceotia. In Asia Minor the people 
would have nothing to do with French rulers or the priests of the 
Western Church, and a brave Greek officer, Theodore Lascaris, 
set up a state of his own as "emperor " at Nicaea, in Bithynia, and 
valiantly defeated the Seljuk Turks coming down from the central 
plateau, slaying their Sultan with his own hand in single combat. 
Another Greek state in Epirus was a rival to that of Nicaea, and it 
soon became clear that the Latin Empire would be the victim of 
one or the other. John III., of Nicaea, son-in-law and successor 
to the brave Lascaris, was a good soldier, and an able, energetic, 
and economical ruler. In 1230 he drove the French out of southern 
Thrace, and five years later Constantinople was only saved by the 
arrival of a Venetian fleet. The western Greek state of Thessalonica 
was annexed in 1245, but a few years later, in the time of a minor, 



Germany and Italy 287 

an able general, Michael Paleologus, seized 'the throne, and soon 
had to meet a host of foes. The usurper, in 1260. won a great 
battle against the united forces of the French and Epirots, and then 
he turned against Constantinople, whose ruler, another Baldwin, 
was in the last stage of financial distress. In the absence of the 
Venetian fleet, the city was taken by surprise, and the miserable 
farce of the " Latin Empire " came to an end. 

The renewed Greek or Byzantine Empire, under Michael Paleo- 
logus, at first included a portion ot Asia Minor in the west and 
south. Northern Thrace and Macedonia were held by the Bulgarians ; 
Epirus was independent ; Greece, except a part of Peloponnesus, 
was gone, and the /Egean Islands, as we have seen, belonged to 
Venice. The chance of restoration to the olden power had departed 
for ever. Society was decayed ; fiscal and administrative efficiency 
was hopeless, from the lack of suitable instruments. The loss of 
trade at Constantinople placed the empire, from lack of means, 
beyond recovery. The merchants of the West had been taught 
by the Crusades to go for their goods straight to the places of 
production in Syria and Egypt, instead of seeking them in the 
storehouses of Constantinople, and the Latin conquest of the city 
had completed the commercial change by introducing the Venetians. 
The Italian republics were all arrayed, as rivals in commerce, against 
the Byzantine Empire, and there was no naval force to cope with 
theirs. The new emperor reigned for 21 years (1261-1282) without 
being able in any way to strengthen his position, ever at war with 
Venice or Genoa, and irritating each in turn, as temporary allies, 
by his treacherous conduct. The Turks in Asia Minor made some 
conquests, and the imperial dominion there became almost a nullity. 

Chapter III. — Germany and Italy. 

We turn from this spectacle of decline to Germany and Italy, where 
we shall see the conflict of Pope and Emperor, the representatives 
of those who had united in founding the " Holy Roman Empire." 
In 1 1 38 the Hohenstaufen (or Swabian) line of emperors came to 
power in the person of Conrad III. (11 38-1 152). The name is 
derived from Hohenstaufen, a castle which then stood on the 
summit of a steep and lofty conical hill in what is now the kingdom 
of Wiirtemberg. There were already a Papal party and an emperor's 
party in Germany, and about this time arose the names of 
"Waiblings" and "Welfs " (corrupted in Italian to " Ghibellines " 



288 A History of the World 

and " Guelfs ") as those respectively assumed by supporters of the 
emperors and maintainers of Papal power. The nephew and 
successor of Conrad, elected by the German princes, was Frederick I. 
(1152-1190), surnamed in Italian "Barbarossa" or "Red Beard," 
one of the noblest personages of the middle ages. We may first 
note the changes, in feeling and in constitutional matters, which had 
come in German affairs. Papal power had been growing, and the 
encroachments of the Roman See aroused a feeling of repulsion 
north of the Alps. A real Teutonic patriot was bound to resist 
Italian priestcraft. All fiefs had become hereditary, and could only 
be granted afresh, in case of a vacancy, not by the feudal sovereign, 
but by the States or Diet of nobles. The commonwealth of princes 
and barons was beginning to be regarded as the main part of the 
empire. The principle of election to the imperial office by the 
feudal nobles had become well established. It was under these 
circumstances that Frederick Barbarossa assumed his position. He 
is still regarded as one of the national heroes, as the type of 
Teutonic character, enshrined in legend and song, statue and picture, 
throughout German territory. He stands forth as the haughty 
maintainer of imperial rights, especially as regarded northern Italy, 
where the authority of the rulers, who remained, for the most part, 
north of the Alps, had long been suffering from their neglect. In 
Germany Frederick's policy in dealing with his vassals was one of 
conciliation and judicious rearrangement of the balance of power. 
The duke of Saxony received also the duchy of Bavaria, and thus 
became by far the most powerful of German princes. At the same 
time, Austria was taken from Bavaria, and became a new and 
separate duchy, hereditary in the female as well as in the male line. 
Some of the barons were held in check by the conferring of new 
rights upon the municipal cities, their chief opponents. The duchy 
of Bohemia became a kingdom. The bishop of Cologne received 
Westphalia, and Guelf princes began to rule in Brunswick. The 
emperor, very handsome in face and dignified in form, with free 
gracious manners, a firm will, and high administrative ability, war- 
like in spirit, ambitious not merely for personal ends, was a sort 
of imperialist Hildebrand, regarding his office as being fully equal 
in sanctity to that of the Pope. At the beginning of the reign 
this was the Englishman Adrian IV. (1154-1159), who crowned 
Frederick "King of Italy "and "Roman Emperor." He was very 
strong in Germany, supported by all parties, including the prelates, 
and on one occasion, when a Papal legate declared in the Diet that 



Germany and Italy 289 

the Empire was dependent on the Papacy, the man's life was saved 
only by the emperor's personal intervention. 

Frederick's great conflict with the Papacy, a strife of 20 years' 
duration, was carried on against Alexander III. (1159-1181), of 
Italian race, and it was only by the aid of the Lombard cities that 
the Pope prevailed. In 1158 the emperor, resolved on asserting 
his rights in Italy, marched thither with an army, and at first Milan 
and the other towns submitted to the transference of their inner 
jurisdiction to an imperial officer. The Pope encouraged them to 
form a league of mutual support, with " The Church " as their watch- 
word, and thus arose the Italian party of Guelfs. The cities were, 
of course, mainly contending for municipal self-rule, but Frederick, 
though it is ridiculous to represent him as a foreign tyrant and 
oppressor, could scarcely yield to such an attitude. He turned 
fiercely on the rebels in 1 162, and Milan vanished by utter destruction 
with fire. Five years later, the northern cities were again in arms 
— Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, Ferrara, Mantua, Vicenza, Padua, 
Verona, Treviso, and others. In this cause Guelfs and Ghibelins 
were for the time united. Milan was rebuilt, and Alessandria was 
founded, with a name derived from that of their ally, the Pope. 
Frederick again crossed the Alps, and drove Alexander from Rome ; 
but he was soon forced to retire through a plague which almost 
destroyed his force. He was then occupied for some years with 
German affairs, and it was not until 11 74 that he crossed Mont 
Cenis into Lombardy. Failing in a siege of Alessandria, the emperor 
advanced to Legnano, about 15 miles from Milan, and there he 
met with utter defeat from the Milanese, gathered around their 
carroccio, a waggon with a flagstaff planted on it, which the Lombards 
used as a rallying-point in battle. This famous conflict, from which 
the emperor with difficulty escaped, had notable effects. The 
freedom of the cities was secured by the Peace of Constance, in 
which the emperor renounced everything except the mere recog- 
nition of his suzerainty. Nominally a part of the empire, and 
henceforth virtually independent, the cities of Lombardy began 
a career of freedom, often stained by mutual jealousy and con- 
flict, but productive of great things in the development of artistic 
culture. 

A great feature of Frederick's reign in Germany was his 
hearty recognition of the importance of the towns which had grown 
up in the south and west, mainly on the rivers which favoured 
trade. These natural allies of the Crown against the nobles 



290 A History of the World 

and princes, clerical and lay, fostered also by the successors of 
Barbarossa, were the famous " Free Cities " which became, for 
a long period, the centres of Teutonic freedom and intellectual 
power, havens of safety amid the storms of civil war, loyal supporters 
of the throne with money and men, in return for the favours 
bestowed upon them in the way of municipal institutions, inde- 
pendent jurisdiction, and many privileges. Such were Cologne 
and Treves (Trier), Mentz (Mayence) and Worms, Speyer and 
Niirnberg, Ulm, Regensburg (Ratisbon), and Augsburg. The old 
order of German freemen in the towns was raised by Frederick's 
allowing them to be admitted to knighthood, and benefited by 
the checking of the unruly barons, and by improvements in the 
administration of justice. We have already seen the death of 
this great ruler in the Third Crusade. The limits of the empire 
at this period included the following territories, consisting of the 
German lands in which effective sovereignty was exercised, and 
of non-German districts where the emperor was acknowledged as 
sole monarch, but little regarded in a practical way. Germany 
proper, besides other territories, comprised Lorraine, Alsace, and 
a part of Flanders. Outside this were the northern half of Italy 
and the kingdom of Burgundy or Aries — this latter being made 
up of Provence, Dauphine, the " Free County " of Burgundy, or 
Franche Comte, and the western part of Switzerland. Bohemia 
and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and Pomerania were 
outlying dependencies not yet forming part of the empire, and 
the region from the Oder to the Vistula was inhabited by yet 
heathen Lithuanians or Prussians, whose subjection and conversion 
came about afterwards, as we have seen, through the military order 
of Teutonic knights. 

Frederick's successor, his son Henry VT. (1190-1197), became 
ruler of Sicily by right of his wife, daughter of King Roger, and 
thus disappeared the Norman realm which had always supported 
the Pope against the Emperor. Henry, in his Sicilian dominions, 
was a cruel tyrant, and his death, occurring under the Papacy 
of Innocent III., allowed that energetic ruler to extend his influence 
in Italy. We pass over civil war in Germany between rival claimants 
for the empire, each elected by some of the princes, and the 
rule of Otto IV., one of the defeated allies at Bouvines, in order 
to arrive at the most remarkable of all the emperors, Frederick II., 
who ruled from 12 12 till 1250. This son of Henry, trained in 
Sicily, his native country, by his Italian mother, had little of 



Germany and Italy 291 

the Teutonic character. His natural gifts, and his acquired 
accomplishments in literature, languages, science, and art, earned 
for him the title, from an English chronicler, of " Wonder of the 
World." Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Hebrew, Arabic, German- 
all spoken in his wide dominions — were to him like mother-tongues. 
He had the energy and knightly courage of his grandsire Barbarossa. 
It was on the intellectual side of his highly subtle, philosophical, 
and sympathetic character that he was least understood by the 
men of his own day, of whom he was many generations in advance. 
His love of beauty and luxury made the keen politician, warrior, 
and lawgiver appear to some a mere sensualist. In his Sicilian 
home he learned much from Mohammedan instructors, and he 
showed a favour to the adherents of Islam which caused him 
to be regarded by bigots as a mere pretender to orthodoxy when 
he went on the Fifth Crusade, and, in later life was a persecutor 
of heretics. His polished manners and witty discourse were those 
of the southern clime of his birth and education. He was 
accused of blasphemy and unbelief, but these charges, in the 
" Age of Faith," might rest on the slightest foundations. The 
many-sided man was and is a riddle of seeming inconsistency. 
What is certain about his career is that he, among the emperors, 
was fated to the long and desperate struggle with the Papacy which 
left Rome triumphant over the ablest and most accomplished of 
the long line of German Ccesars, who exhausted in vain all the 
resources of military and political skill in the attempt to vindicate 
the rights of the civil power against the Church ; that the result 
of the conflict determined the fortunes of the German kingdom, 
and of the little republics of northern Italy ; and that the vengeful 
hatred of the priesthood, pursuing his house to the third generation, 
effected the ruin of the line of Hohenstaufen. 

In 1220 Frederick went to Italy to be crowned as emperor, and 
he was absent from his German dominions for 15 years. It was 
at this time, while he was engaged in settling Italian affairs, that he 
founded the university of Naples, and was the patron, at his court, 
of poets, artists, and men of learning. He caused his chancellor to 
draw up a code of laws for the common benefit of all classes of his 
Italian and German subjects, but his earnest efforts for an impossible 
unity in his dominions were hampered by the opposition of the 
Papacy and the Lombard cities. The real ground of Papal jealousy 
and dislike was the emperor's possession of Sicily, which placed the 
occupants of the Holy See, very eager for increase of temporal sway, 



292 A History of the World 

between the two fires of imperial power to north and south of central 
Italy. Frederick had, at the beginning of his reign, vowed to go on 
a Crusade, and when urgent affairs delayed the execution of this 
project from time to time, he was excommunicated. When he did 
start for the East in 1228, every effort was used by the Papacy to 
cause him to fail ; and when, without the use of armed force, he 
effected much for the cause of the pilgrims, he was charged with dis- 
honouring the Church by unworthy dealings with the infidel. In 
1234, the emperor was troubled by the revolt of his son Henry, who 
had been crowned at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) as " King of Rome," 
the title of the German king-elect, but his efforts failed against the 
alliance, in the father's favour, of the princes of the empire and the 
imperial cities. The unrepentant villain, after submission, tried to 
poison his father, and ended his days in an Apulian prison. In 1237, 
Frederick was at open war with the cities of the Lombard League, 
and gained a great victory over the Milanese army at Corte Nuova 
in Lombard} 7 , capturing the famous carroccio, which he sent to Rome 
as agalling proof to the Pope of the imperial victory over his allies. 
From 1239 to 1250 the emperor, as an excommunicated and, by the 
Pope, in 1245, dethroned man, was at war with Gregory IX. and his 
successor Innocent IV. Rival rulers to himself were elected in 
Germany, but Frederick paid no heed and fought on in Italy. In 
1247 his army was routed by the troops of Padua, and his brave 
natural son Enzio, fighting for his father, was taken by the men of 
Bologna, in 1249, and consigned to a life-long captivity. The 
following year brought the death of the emperor, worn-out by toil 
and disaster. His son Conrad, succeeding to the kingdom of Sicily, 
had to fight for his realm, and died in 1254. His half-brother 
Manfred, regent tor Conrad's infant son Conradin, and then king of 
Sicily, died fighting in 1266 against Charles, count of Anjou, brought 
into the field by Pope Clement IV., a Frenchman. The young 
Conradin, set up as king of Sicily by some Ghibelline nobles, was 
taken in battle by Charles in 1268 and beheaded, and with him 
ended the line of Hohenstaufen. From 1256 to 1273 there was an 
interregnum, and a time of lawless confusion in Germany, ended at 
last by the election to the empire of Rudolf of Hapsburg, a castle in 
the Aargau. 

The strength of the empire perished with Frederick II. The 
kingship in Germany had been sacrificed to the vain dream of 
universal dominion, and to the hopeless effort at combining power 
in Italy with real control of the feudal nobles north of the Alps. 



Germany and Italy 293 

France was rising in political power as Germany declined, and the 
centralisation of authority there and in England was in striking 
contrast to the deplorable spectacle presented by the lack of unity 
and order in Germany. The kings of France and of England had 
been able to resist Papal encroachments ; the emperors of Germany 
had conspicuously failed. The most favourable view of Germany 
under the Hohenstaufen emperors is presented in the freeing of 
numerous serfs. Some were emancipated in reward for doing good 
service in the Crusades ; others obtained freedom from nobles who were 
setting out for the Holy Land ; many more, fleeing from ill-treatment, 
were welcomed and protected in the free cities, and received in due 
time municipal rights. This age was also remarkable in Germany 
for the beginnings of Gothic or pointed architecture, and for the 
poems of the Minnesanger or lyrists of love, and the great epic poem 
called the Nibelungenlied, now held to rank next to the Homeric 
poems in its own style of verse. 

The history of Italy in mediaeval times, except as regards the 
Papacy and Venice, which have a unity and superiority of their own, 
is of the most perplexing and tedious character through the incessant 
changes which took place in the internal condition and external 
relations of numerous petty states. We shall here deal with these 
down to the end of the middle ages in a general sketch, reserving 
Venice, the Papacy, and Naples and Sicily, as to the two later 
centuries of that period. It has been well said that " the key- 
notes of Italian mediceval history are individualism and self- 
assertion, and the breath of the people's being was a long-lasting, 
ever-reviving struggle between commune and commune, class and 
class, family and family." The communes or municipalities were 
the origin of these famous republics, all of them, large and 
small, animated by narrow and intense civic patriotism, and by 
the impulse of expansion at the cost of their neighbours. Skill 
and industry in handicrafts and trade were the foundations of 
prosperity in a country which was a great centre of agricultural 
produce and most favourably placed for commercial intercourse. 
Except in Lombardy, these cities never made any confederation for 
a common object of defence, and it is to this persistent individuality 
of character that their precocious development of a brilliant civilisa- 
tion is due. During the long period of German influence and 
interference in Italy, the conflicts between different states were 
complicated, in the nth and three following centuries, by the 
strife of the famous parties called Guelfs or Guelphs, and Ghibelins 



294 A History of the World 

or Ghibellines. These words represented the Italian form, Guelfi 
and Ghibellini, as the theatre of contest was chiefly in Italy, of the 
original German "Welf" and " Waiblingen," the respective names 
of the historical family of which the House of Brunswick is a 
branch, and of a town in Wiirtemberg possessed by the imperial 
House of Hohenstaufen. The words became, in Germany, the war. 
cries of rival factions, "Welf" that of supporters of the Papal party 
and opponents of the emperor, " Waiblingen " that of the maintainers 
of the imperial cause against the Pope. When the struggle was 
transferred to Italy, the Guelfs were thus on the Papal side, and the 
Ghibellines were the partisans of the imperial cause. We must 
notice also that, when Frederick Barbarossa of Germany attacked 
the free cities, the Guelfs became the Papal party as well as the 
popular faction, because the Popes, for their own interests, sup- 
ported them against the emperor, while the Ghibellines, as imperial 
partisans, represented the Italian feudal party. 

The Italian cities were thus divided by the feuds of Guelfs and 
Ghibellines, both parties having the same object, that of predominance 
in the communes or municipalities. Neither wished to be ruled 
by Emperor* or Pope, but each looked for help to one or other of 
those great rivals, in order to attain its own ends. No principle 
was really involved in these feuds, and in some cities the imperial 
party was predominant simply from hatred of a petty neighbouring 
state which espoused the cause of the Church. In northern Italy 
the cities were divided between the two parties — Florence, Milan, 
Bologna, Piacenza, Modena, and others being generally more 
Guelphic, while Pisa, Lucca, and others were Ghibelline. Im- 
portant cities, however, as well as great Italian families, swayed 
from side to side according to successive political exigencies and 
private interests. When the influence of the German emperors in 
Italy became lessened, and at last almost extinct, the ancient names 
involved no longer any show of principle, but simply represented 
traditional or hereditary prejudice. With these circumstances 
attaching to the contests of Guelfs and Ghibellines, it is obvious 
that they can have no more interest or importance for modern 
readers than, as Milton wrote of the struggles between the early 
English kingdoms, "the strife of kites and crows." Nothing, in 
truth, can be more wearisome, as already stated, than Italian 
mediaeval history in its details, and we shall notice only the names 
of a few great families and leaders, with some special circumstances 
of the strife between parties and cities, except as regards the 



Italy 295 

important and most interesting commercial and artistic development 
of the Tuscan Republics and of Venice. 

There were also in Italy many strong independent nobles in 
their castles. Some weaker nobles were admitted to various little 
states as citizens, and then they built fortresses in the cities, enabling 
them to defy the civil power, and the public peace was con- 
stantly disturbed by their quarrels. In order to check these dis- 
orders, a magistrate called Podeshl (from the Latin potestas, 
meaning " official power ") was appointed in many places, being a 
man of good birth from some other city, and thus unbiassed in 
local feuds. Chosen by the chief council, he held office for a 
year, and had to give account of his administration to certain 
magistrates at the close of his term. Another feature of this period 
in Italy was the rise and sway of tyrants in some of the cities. 
We have an example in Eccelino, who by help of the emperor 
Frederick II., whom he aided in turn, became master of Padua, 
Vicenza, and Verona, and ruled in the north-east as a rival of the 
Lombard League. He used great oppression, forcing the citizens 
to serve in his army, and arousing general hatred by his cruelty. 
Milan was ruled by the powerful Ghibelline Matteo Visconti, in part 
of the 14th century, and he also became master of Pavia, Alessandria, 
and other cities. In Verona the family of Scala held sway, and 
Ferrara and Modena were subject to nobles of the House of 
Este. 

In Rome the great Colonna family, named from a village among 
the Alban Hills, and possessed of numerous castles, vast estates, 
and thousands of dependents, had much influence from the nth to 
the 16th century. During the period called "the Babylonish 
Captivity," because the Popes, from 1305 to 1377, dwelt almost 
entirely at Avignon, in Provence, great disorder arose from the 
quarrels of the Colonna and Orsini families. It was during this 
time that, in 1347, the famous Niccola de Rienzi, a young man of 
low birth and good abilities, was chosen " Tribune " by the people, 
and reduced the nobles to order. His head was turned by success, 
and after one expulsion and return he was killed during a tumult 

in 1354- 

In the latter part of the 14th century the Visconti family of 
Milan, one of whom is noticed above, became very powerful, ruling 
more than 20 cities, and being masters at last of most of Lombardy. 
They had a large trained army, including the famous English " Free 
Company " of mercenaries under Sir John Hawkwood, one of the 



296 A History of the World 

most skilful generals of the age, and in 1369 the head of the 
Viscontis made war on Florence. That state was at last successful 
through hiring Hawkwood and his men. At the end of the 
14th century, another Visconti became "duke of Milan," with a 
great territory, and the family was thus established with hereditary 
rule, governing Pisa, Lucca, Perugia, and Siena, and cutting off 
Florence from the sea. Her trade and even her freedom were thus 
imperilled, but an outbreak of the Oriental plague cut off the duke 
in 1402, at the height of his power. The duchy of Milan was then 
divided among a number of petty tyrants, whose courts were usually 
scenes of the foulest vice, as the rulers made humanity, decency, 
and natural affection yield to the gratification of their own desires. 
The example spread among private citizens, and the moral condition 
of affairs was to the last degree disgraceful. In 1447 Francesco 
Sforza, one of the ablest of all Italian commanders in mediaeval 
times, a man who had risen from the position of a peasant to that 
of leader of the Neapolitan army, entered the service of the Milanese, 
and gained a victory for them in a war against Venice. In 1450 
he compelled the people of Milan to accept him as duke. 

At Florence one family, that of the Medici, was dominant. The 
famous Cosimo (Cosmo) de' Medici was son of a man who had 
become very rich by commerce. He carried on the business 
inherited from his father, lived in great style, and became a Mae- 
cenas of mediaeval days in his liberal patronage of literary men. 
His popularity was very great, and after banishment for a year 
through the influence of jealous rivals, he returned in triumph, in 
1434, hailed as " Father of his Country," and the Medici family 
was finally established in Florence. On the death of Cosmo in 
1464, after a moderate and splendid use of almost absolute power, 
the city had been adorned by the cathedral church, with the beautiful 
dome, due to the skill of the architect Brunelleschi ; and Cosmo's 
enlightened use of wealth had enriched his library, called the 
" Medicean," with the manuscripts of classical authors discovered 
by Bracciolini and other scholars who made researches in the 
monastic collections of western Europe and the Greek Empire. 
He was succeeded in power by his son, and, after a brief interval, 
his grandsons Lorenzo and Giuliano inherited the family sway. 

There were many conspiracies against the tyrants of Italian cities, 
men encouraged by the success of Sforza in becoming duke of 
Milan. People who had been studying the classical writers adopted 
the short and sharp way of dealing with cruel despots. Galeazzo, 



Italy 

duke of Milan, n ith in \\~ r >- At the 

. a leading family who took part in 
it, w I \ . an 1 by some . i 

The I 

and I , then holding way in Florence, I ■ not 

G I'he were .it tins time, 

<>( the 1 5 tli century, striving to obtain more 
u in: rer, not merely for the Church, but for their own 

families, l>y making Italian pi and 

i /i plot aimed at the assassination of the 

i, who hid I ne of the m hemes of Po| 

at a : ten >>n Sunday, April 161 . 1:7- 'I he 

rded the dinner, and then it « ed that 

in in the cathedral by two prii ■■-. V the moment 

I the little bell - Itar and the "Host" was 

uplifted * I 10 the heart bj 

the 1 but the two pru to kill 

They tied, hut 
I'he people tinst 

nd the .i , who had t tken 

• in the . "" ial 

The whole transaction throw I light upon tin morals 

r.uik at tl . and in 

I 

firmed by the failure o( the 

Ml nifi ■ •■• ' !-\ a 1 

the public funds, ii men of letters 

■ 

•int. Ki iand 

I 

■ 

■ 
■ 



298 A History of the World 

life was replacing the activity of the period of self-rule in the various 
states. It was at this time that the Dominican friar Savonarola 
began, in 1489, to earn his martyrdom by denouncing in Florence 
the social vices and the worldliness of the Church. 



BOOK IV. 

FROM THE CRUSADE PERIOD TO THE DIS- 
COVERY OF AMERICA (a.d. 1 270-1492). 

Chapter I. — Northern Europe : British Isles ; Scandinavia; 
the Netherlands ; France. 

Edward I., eldest son of Henry III., came to the throne in 1272, 
when he was 33 years of age, and reigned until 1307. This ablest 
and best of all the Plantagenet kings, one of the greatest of English 
rulers, was noble alike in person and character. Courageous and 
skilful in war, the victor over the great Simon de Montfort at 
Evesham ; learned and wise in legislation ; truthful and just in 
all his dealings; energetic, watchful, sagacious in administration 
and policy ; he lacked little of perfection as a king over men, and 
well won the fear, love, and admiration of his subjects. His faults 
were those of many monarchs of feudal days — pride, imperiousness, 
and occasional cruelty wrought on those whose resistance provoked 
his wrath. His wife, Eleanor of Castile, was worthy of her husband, 
and no higher praise can be given to her of whom Edward wrote, 
on her death in 1290, at Hareby, in Lincolnshire, to his friend the 
abbot of Clugny, in seeking his prayers for her soul : " We loved 
her tenderly in her lifetime, and we do not cease to love her in 
death." Her memory was kept alive by the famous " Eleanor 
Crosses," one of which was afterwards erected at every nightly 
halting-place, as her body was conveyed in solemn procession 
from Lincolnshire to London. The finest of all was that at Waltham 
Cross, in Hertfordshire ; the erection of the last, at the village of 
Charing, near to the final destination at Westminster Abbey, gave 
its name to the thoroughfare now ever alive with the traffic of the 
world's greatest city. 

The two great objects of Edward's policy were the bringing of 
the whole island of Great Britain under the rule of the English 



1 Brii l Isles 

, and the foundii a by 

. 

ion, 
as r under h:s weak ami unworthy son and 

In the second, he won eminent 
Dealing .1 Edward, in i-*;;, inarching into 

rellyn, pi 
of tha n Ins [ii. 

Rhyddlan 
were taken and held and a fleet from the Cinque 

11 supplies of provi 
'.let of the eneim mountains was 

winter, forced a surrender. I 

the river I 1 Llewellyn 

kepi ind the Snowdon district. J ■ 

. .i revoll 

I in the north by the Use in the 
army of | from thi ntain 

ire. I.!' 

i i David, I 

I | the 

ii a 
nt held a' :it to introduce t:;' 

I . . the 

aid ol . the 

. 

him the title of ' I | the 

to the n .ah of 

1 n :. his title rem. lined henceforth that borne by t. ; . 

ion of the Count: 

■t fully • ited wil i nd, retur 

until the time ol 1 i nry VIII. I 

■ 



tth "f tl. 



300 A History of the Wot Id 

it with vassalage to the English crown. In 1296 war was caused 
by a Scottish alliance with France, then engaged in hostilities with 
England, and by a renunciation of allegiance to Edward. The 
struggle for Scottish independence had begun, and at first the 
English sovereign had great success. Berwick was stormed with 
dreadful slaughter. Dunbar, Edinburgh, and Stirling fell. Baliol 
was dethroned and went a prisoner to London, along with the 
famous coronation-stone from Scone and the Scottish regalia. 
Southern Scotland was being kept down by garrisons, and had 
been put in civil and military charge of English officials, as a 
conquered country, when the great patriot and hero, and able 
general, William Wallace, took the field in 1297. He .at once 
gained a brilliant victory over an English army at Stirling Bridge, 
but in 1298 Edward, in person, routed his forces at Falkirk. On 
the renewal of the war in 1303, Edward reduced the south again 
to submission, and, two years later, Wallace was betrayed, taken 
to London, and executed, with gross injustice, as a traitor, though 
he had never sworn allegiance to the English sovereign. The 
spirit of the feudal times is shown in the fact that such a king as 
Edward, in dealing with so gallant a foe, could have his head 
struck off, after hanging, and placed on a pole fixed over London 
Bridge, and then dispatch the four quarters of his body for public 
exhibition at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth, and Aberdeen. One of 
Wallace's partisans, Sir Simon Fraser, was also put to death in 
London, and his head was placed beside that of his great leader. 
These were the only victims. A scheme of rule was drawn up 
which left Scottish law in force for most affairs, and placed authority 
in the hands of Scottish nobles. 

In 1306 a yet greater man than Wallace in ability, though not, 
perhaps, so pure a patriot, took up arms for his country. This 
was Robert Bruce, of English lineage, brought up at the English 
court, and having a good claim to the crown of Scotland. In 
July, Bruce was defeated by Edward's commander at Methven, 
in Perthshire, and he spent the winter as a fugitive in the little 
isle of Rathlin, off the north coast of Ireland. Many of his leading 
friends in Scotland were executed. In the spring of 1307 Bruce 
was back in Scotland, and severely defeated the victor of Methven, 
the earl of Pembroke, at Loudon Hill. The great English king, 
now not so much old in years (he was 68) as worn out by long 
and heavy toils in council and on the field of battle, died at Burgh- 
on-Sands, near Carlisle, as he made his way to take vengeance on 



The Rriti ' 301 

the new "rebel " [n warfare with 

sh and French marin 

his 

[V. I 

territory in I 

• 

• 1 . . I ] reign was 1 >( "rtant 

1 toe si. ante dealt with the undu ion of lands 

l>y the Church. Another favoured trade by enabling merer] 

I rompt m t defaulting debtors. A third, the 

f Wincht the publl by appointing 

I the highways of lurking' 
Another law created "entailed and 

.red the ri>e ntinuance • landowning fam 

end from father to son or other heir, 

in the actual 
ifirmation of the 1 was due to the 

tain patrii >ns to the kii 

• . trliament A 

rbade the exaction of 
.1 revenu 
with ■ nt of Parliament It was thus that the " | 

wholly and formally vested in thai In this 

n of the I 1 :u:non P 

. and Exchequer, which until » had 

criminal 
1 in which the 

III. 
f suil 

: ■ 

I I 

1 

1 

OOO 



302 A History of the World 

Scottish foot and but 500 cavalry, over more than thrice the 
number of Englishmen, half composed of heavy mailed horsemen, 
was due to skilful generalship. The Scottish spearmen were 
arrayed in solid circles capable of resisting the charges of horse. 
The right flank was covered by the rugged ground and by the 
broken banks of the stream called Bannockburn. The left wing 
was protected by pits and trenches, which limited the space for 
the movements of the English cavalry. The Scottish spearmen 
stood firm against all attempts to break them. The English archers 
were dispersed, as their fire began to gall the circles of Scots, 
by a happy charge of the few cavalry of Bruce on the left flank. 
As confusion arose among the foes, Bruce brought up his reserve 
and pressed hotly forward, and a panic soon arose which sent 
Edward in full flight from the field, leaving behind him in the 
dust above a score of barons, 200 knights, 700 " squires," and 
30,000 of the common sort. A vast spoil was secured by the 
victors, with countless prisoners, including over 20 barons and 
60 knights. The conquering Scots lost nearly 4,000 in all. There 
was further fighting on both sides of the Border, but in 1328 the 
Treaty of Northampton recognised Bruce as king, and renounced 
the claim to feudal "homage" from Scottish sovereigns. The 
reign of Edward II. was, in other respects, one of almost unbroken 
shame and misery. His Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston, was 
hated by the barons, who, after his banishment and recall, took 
and hanged him, having then assumed the government of the 
country. The barons were equally hostile to the new royal 
favourites, the two Despensers, father and son, but Edward turned 
with a spasm of energy upon his nobles, and, defeating their leader, 
the earl of Lancaster, captured and executed him in 1322. Four 
years later his wife, Isabella of France, in league with some of 
the barons, landed with her lover Roger Mortimer, and a body 
of men, in 1326, on returning from a diplomatic mission to her 
native country. The Despensers were then taken and hanged. 
The king was deposed by Parliament, and imprisoned in Berkeley 
Castle. There, in September, 1327, by order of Isabella and 
Mortimer, he was murdered with cruelty so atrocious, that " the 
shrieks of an agonising king," in the words of the poet Gray, 
who justly styles the wicked wife " She-wolf of France " — shrieks 
heard with terror by the neighbouring peasants amid the gloom 
of night — seem yet to ring through the ages, arousing ceaseless 
wonder as to what evil-doing of the victim — a crowned and 



I Brit ! 303 

>uld have led him terrible a 

in. 

w.is a l; men of the feudal 

rrior. Ambitious, enei 

:uist of his 1 

• int at tl. m assum 

rer in 1330. Roger Mortimer was Beized at midnight, as he 

a iih I>al>< ght up to Tyburn, 

in 1 ind hang< ■!. The iri< life-long 

near King's Lynn, where her Bon paid 

her | 

left I to her 1 married to the excellent 

Philrj ult, a provii N therlands, had 

Idren, of wh 
1 of the wan Black Prince," the 

r ; the thir.l son, 1 
. in the female line ; the fourth son, 
John of ( 

nund, am 
■ : I in tlie mal In 1333 son 

with I i . 

r in an: 

i land. It 

: r into the Tudoi 

ip! II l.'a n ign, i^ 

'he war • 

m the ( Channel ; 

I 

I 

■ 

held 



304 A History of the World 

and as a depot for the wool exported hence to Flanders ; and the 
battle of Poitiers, with the capture of the French king, and his 
kindly treatment by the victorious Black Prince. The importance 
of Crecy and Poitiers in mediaeval history lay in the fact that, apart 
from skilful generalship in Edward and his son, those great triumphs 
were due to English archery — to long steel-tipped shafts shot 
strongly and with accurate aim from powerful bows carried by 
English yeomen and peasants. The foot-soldiers of the day, the 
lowest military class of feudal times, laid low in battle the armour- 
clad knights, and the mass of the people knew the power of their 
own right arms in self-defence. The strength of feudalism — the 
ascendency in war of barons, knights, and squires — was shaken to 
its base, and the power of the popular element had begun. We 
must also note the dreadful work done by the pestilence, an out- 
break of Oriental plague, which raged through most of Europe in 
1348-49, and was known as "the Black Death." Accurate 
statistics are, of course, impossible, but there is good reason to 
believe that from one-third to one-half of the people perished. The 
effect in England was to raise the rate of wages paid by landowners, 
who now tilled their lands mostly by hired labour, and to cause some 
legislation to compel the peasants to work at fixed wages in their 
own localities. Much of the land ceased, from lack of labourers, 
to be tilled for corn, and became pasture for the raising of wool, 
which was a source of great profit by export for weaving in the 
looms of the Netherlands. 

The French war ended tor a time with the Peace of Bretigny in 
1360, by which Edward renounced his claim to the French crown, 
and received, in full sovereignty, not merely on the old feudal tenure, 
the territory of Poitou, Gascony, and Guienne. Nine years later 
the war was renewed, and a great French leader and hero came 
into the field in Bertrand du Guesclin. This commander, after the 
return of the Black Prince to England, with broken health, in 137 1, 
carried on the contest with such skill that by 1375, all the French 
territory was lost, except the towns of Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, 
Cherbourg, and Calais. In his last years, after the death of the 
queen, Edward fell under the control of a worthless woman, Alice 
Perrers, and her friends, and it was needful for Parliament to 
interfere. The legislation of the reign included statutes to prevent 
appointments by the Pope to Church livings in England, and the 
famous law forbidding suits to be carried on appeal from the king's 
courts to that of Rome. 



The British ! 305 

Th< 

rity, <lur; iriol Oil 

ied l>y the 1 the men 

Lent and 1 »s< \ (i 1 

ihou ! made their way into l 

nu, and Simon ol 1 interbury 

refuge in the l . and 

I. Then the people against him * • > his 

; the imposition of a heavy poll-! 
stly ami useless warfare with France and 
. 
menl 

thi old 1 1 labour of the " \ ill" 

or ] I he killing of Wat Tyler by Lord M 

I by the di of the in 

le by the young king at the in 
I pardon I 
f leases 

n fi 'lly in 

. but 
the 1 t of I timately 

to the cause ol between 

• i lay Ian I 

• the abi 
. but he was una] 
irbulent 1 
until 

m bands. I 

■ 

I . : : 



306 A History of the World 

excess of wealth and power. The lives of many of the clergy, both 
monks and parish-priests, were of evil example to the laity. Church 
dignitaries and the religious orders cared more for their own worldly 
interests than for their religious duties. The friars, once devoted to 
a life of poverty and of toil among the suffering poor, now lived in 
luxurious ease, either in splendid religious houses or as holders of 
church-livings with large fees and tithes. The satire of the courtly 
poet Chaucer, and of Langland, the popular versifier, was aimed at 
these evils. A class of reformers called " Lollards " had arisen, the 
name being one of reproach bestowed by opponents, and probably 
meaning either " sowers of tares " (heresy) or " utterers of vain 
babble." Among these men were found persons of every class — ■ 
peasants dreaming of social equality ; fanatics in a hurry for moral, 
religious, and political reform ; nobles who hated the arrogant 
prelates, or who coveted ecclesiastical w r ealth. The champion, if 
not the founder, of Lollardry, on its religious side, was that illustrious 
Englishman John Wyclif. His name is spelt in over 30 different 
ways, and well symbolises the man's marvellous versatility of char- 
acter. He was born in Yorkshire about 1325, and became a popular 
teacher at Oxford, with a great store of learning and, in particular, 
a rare knowledge of the Scriptures. He was for a short time Master 
of Balliol College, and in 1374 he was presented to the crown-living 
of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where his pulpit and other relics 
are still shown. 

Scholar, diplomatist, a statesman of great ability in his use of all 
kinds of men as instruments for his work, and in his avoidance of 
playing into the hands of his enemies ; quick and restless in temper; 
of winning manners, witty and eloquent in speech, subtle in logic, 
full of energy and courage, firm of conviction, a hater of hypocrisy 
and wrong — Wyclif was also the " Father of English prose " in his 
admirable popular tracts, and in his translation of the Bible, which 
was greatly circulated in written copies. As the chief supporter of 
English independence against the claims of Rome, he denounced 
the annual export of large sums of money collected by Papal agents 
for the enrichment of Popes who were, at that time, Frenchmen and 
foes of his country. He declaimed against the system by which 
foreigners held English benefices, so that, in defiance of the law, 
parishes were left destitute of priests and the rights of patrons were 
flung aside. After assailing the manifest abuses of the Church, he 
declared at last that it would be better without a Pope or prelates. 
He aroused the fury of the " orthodox " by teaching that the Church 



I ■ I' \h Klcs 307 

•i«l that 5 

I IS 

any of the 

and pen be i"ll" 

it ion. 1 
rried throughout the land by hi> 01 
t preai hen <>t ■• poor | lif may be w< 1 1 

"the Morning-Star of the man whoa 

made th< 1 i 

pen to la) m< n and w< >m< n 
• i.in 11 waa w< 11! to be 
moderate learning, till more, .is one wh< 

da trine ■ of the \>t< ad and 

•1st in the celebration of m 
leadly blow at the priestly power. The n 

mtrol over the consciences, minds, 
• mankind, u[M>n her claim to interpret Scripture and to 
work a una. !<_• in I \V\< til w.is for making 

Vainl) 
authi tantial punishment was concerned, 

this •■.. after I" I Rome to an 

d>r I. 1 at Lutterworth on th 

He was the first who 
of the 1. ; he 

the tir^t apostle, of n 

the meth "1^ of in 

1 l . 

nned all w yi hfs 1 held at 

then 11 n of 

1 a ter I 

I'm. 

ndel 

In < 
In 1 

bun 

t, in 



308 A History of the World 

who had in early life been a follower of Wyclif. The ashes were 
thrown into the little river Swift, flowing by Lutterworth, on its 
quiet way to join Shakespeare's Avon. And then, in the words of 
Thomas Fuller, " this brook conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon 
into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean ; 
and thus the ashes of Wyclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which 
now is dispersed all the world over." 

Henry IV. (1399-1413) was the first of the three Lancastrian 
kings. His title was purely parliamentary, the next heir, by hereditary 
right, being the earl of March, a lad descended from Lionel, duke 
of Clarence, third son of Edward III., while the new sovereign was 
son of John of Gaunt, *he fourth son. The young earl was kept in 
honourable custody at Windsor Castle. Henry was an able, vigilant, 
unscrupulous ruler, devoted to peace and the maintenance of the 
rights of the Church. In 1401 the abominable Statute of Heresy 
provided for the burning, by the civil power, of persons condemned 
for heresy by the ecclesiastical courts. William Sautre, a parish 
priest of Lynn, was the first sufferer, and John Badby, a layman, 
thus died in 14 10. Archbishop Arundel, the foe of Wyclif, living 
and dead, was a great persecutor of the Lollards, and Sir John 
Oldcastle (Lord Cobham) was burnt in 141 7, early in the next reign. 
We may here note that the Inquisition was never established in 
England, and that it was by the law of this reign that the Protestant 
martyrs suffered under Mary Tudor. A rebellion of the Percies of 
Northumberland, aided by Welshmen under Owen Glendower, was 
suppressed by their utter defeat at the battle of Shrewsbury (1403), 
where the king, engaged in person, was valorously helped by his 
young son Henry, Prince of Wales. Some other risings were easily 
dealt with. 

Henry V. (1413-1422) had a short and, in the military sense, 
a brilliant reign. He was a brave and skilful general, of noble 
person ; an able, energetic, eloquent man ; and in home-policy strong 
for the suppression of heresy. The war with France, then desolated 
by a civil conflict between rival parties, arose from the king's revival 
of the claim to the French throne made by Edward III. Two- 
thirds of the large English army perished by disease and in battle 
at the long siege of Harfleur, and in 1415 the retiring force was 
intercepted by the enemy at Agincourt, on the way to embarkation 
at Calais. The brilliant victory of the king over five times the 
number of Frenchmen was due, as at Crecy and Poitiers, to the 
English bowmen. Two French royal dukes," hundreds of nobles, 



The B 



309 



and thou ken pris 

I •-. 1 4 1 7, M 

• 1 

. 

■ . the l • 
married I 

th <>f Charles VI., hi 

if that i!. 
In the follow 

•:>in, eld and 

and slain in 
army. Henry then w< nt 

[riven beyond the 
■ 

1 by the 
1 li^ saddle and helmet 
mb in \\ 
ry VI. (1 I of the d Icing, 

the Privy 

.. il, with the k.i r . _ .ind the 

able ;tn-l nl rivalry. 

the duke of Bedford, an< 

ancle, held 11 I <>f 

lly unfit for rule in unqui is known as the 

n « I of K [n 

being wholly un >] of 

: the Hi n in 

■ her 111 

■ 

turn to 

l 
. 

Irish 
the 



II 



310 A History of the World 

Queen's party, and the insurgents demanded that the government 
of the country should be committed to Richard Plantagenet, duke 
of York, descended from the third and fifth sons of Edward III. 
He was a man of great popularity, wealth, and power, partly 
through marriage-alliances which gave him the support of a noble- 
man of vast resources and influence, the earl of Warwick. The 
rising was easily suppressed, after some damage had been done in 
London. The duke of Somerset, a descendant ot John of Gaunt, 
was a leading Lancastrian, and his claim to the throne was favoured 
by Margaret until the birth, in 1453, of her son Prince Edward. 
In the following year the king became insane for a time, and the 
duke of York was " Protector," but Henry's recovery restored 
Somerset to power, and then the contest for the throne, marked 
throughout by cruelty and treachery, began. It was not, in the 
ordinary sense, a civil war, for the mass of the people took little 
part in it. The Yorkist and Lancastrian factions of nobles employed 
in battle their own retainers and foreign mercenaries, while the 
tillage of the soil, the trade of the towns, and the usual course of 
affairs continued with little interruption. In successive battles, and 
by executions after victory, most of the nobles were swept away, and 
room was thus made for a new order of things, in which a middle 
class of merchants and farmers gained social and political importance. 
In the first action of the war, at St. Albans, in 1455, the Yorkists 
were victorious, Somerset the Lancastrian being killed, and the 
king being captured. On his release, in 1456, there was a truce 
for some years, and then, in 1460, a Yorkist victory at Northampton 
made the Lancastrians powerless. In this battle the young earl 
of March (afterwards Edward IV.), the eldest son of York, showed 
his warlike prowess ; many Lancastrian nobles fell, and the king 
was again taken prisoner. Margaret, with her little son Edward, 
took refuge in Scotland, and was engaged there, and in the north 
of England, in raising fresh forces, while the duke of York was 
accepted by Parliament as successor to the crown. A turn of the 
tide soon came. The great defeat of Northampton had occurred 
in July, and by December of the same year the restless and re- 
sourceful queen, enraged at the setting aside of her son's succession, 
was in the field with a great force. At Wakefield the Lancastrians 
were completely victorious. York was killed in the action, and, 
in derision of his claims, his head, with a paper crown thereon, 
was set up over the gates of the city which gave him his title. 
His second son, the young earl of Rutland, was murdered after 



The British Isles j i i 

the bftttle, and the Yorkisl in the dust, The 

ekfc 'J, now duke <•( York, aOOUl [g \c.irs of 

a b ly .m athletic and ea I warrior, 

man for BUCh a time- in a party's foitum -. In 

i i irdshire, Ins skilful 
fortnight 

later, at the second battle 

did not prevent Edward from entering London, where 

he '.'. med by the citizens, and declared km^ by some of the 

II re practi ally ends the reign 

of Henr) VI . as we need take | int of his restoration, in an 

iml>< -.ion, for a few months of 1470. 

re pursuing the fortunes of the Yorkist 

in the mode of elections to the 1 1 
The franc! ght of voting for members, was 

:' 14 \o, win. Ii restru I 

■14 land worth 40 shil 

IO in the pre 

were thus disfranchised, and the free 

I smallest farmers were thus 

deprived of polii power tor over four 1 and a half. 

I>urr VI. the borough members 

body of the burg< stead 

I by all t n who paid the 

in the t only the artisans hut the middle 

ire< t political 

infill' the COmn ncils in the boroughs were Usually 

the only 1 H ' I ommons mer, 

or main body of the 

le, but ai ly of t 1 and the 

1, undei 'l 
or two i: 

m of m- • under th 

of th I We ma) 

nd, that 1 • this tin 

' 

11 



312 A History of the World 

from his habitual indolence. The royal authority was much 
increased at this time from the lack of control either in the almost 
ruined old baronage, or in any strong middle class, which was not 
yet developed. The " new monarchy," as it has been called, of 
this and early Tudor reigns, was a kind of despotism under which 
the sovereigns, enriched by the plunder of the nobles and the Church, 
did not regularly summon meetings of Parliament for legal taxation, 
but resorted to unlawful measures in the shape of " benevolences," 
really forced loans, from wealthy persons, and of imposts not voted 
in the Commons. The restraint upon monarchs at this time was, 
in fact, public opinion, and the dread of armed insurrection, against 
which they could bring no force of a "standing army." It was 
under Henry VIII. that Parliament became most helpless and 
servile, though even then the Commons more than once stoutly 
resisted, and with success, the royal orders as to taxation. Under 
Elizabeth the power of the Commons slowly revived, and the 
people became ready for the struggle of Stuart days. 

The new king was compelled, at the outset, to fight for his 
throne against the still unconquered Margaret. On Palm Sunday, 
March 29th, 1461, near Tovvton, a village south-west of York, 
the most sanguinary battle ever fought on British soil ended in the 
utter rout, almost the annihilation, of the Lancastrians. In this 
horrible struggle Edward was aided by the earl of Warwick in 
the command of 50,000 men against 60,000 hardy enemies, men 
of the northern hills and moors, their ranks swelled by borderers 
whose life was made up of foray and fight. From nine in the 
morning, for six hours, with the utmost courage and obstinacy, the 
conflict was maintained. On this occasion Edward led, besides 
the retainers wearing the badges and gathered under the banners 
of many Yorkist nobles, a large contingent from Bristol, Coventry, 
Worcester, Salisbury, Leicester, Gloucester, Northampton, and 
Nottingham. The men of the towns had rallied round the ruler 
who represented the cause of trade, progress, and enlightenment, 
and of internal peace based on the extinction or suppression of a 
disorderly baronage. The skill or luck of Edward placed his men, 
at the outset, with their backs to a violent storm of snow which 
blew full in the faces of the Lancastrian archers, and baffled their 
aim, while the force of the wind drove home the Yorkist shafts. 
At three o'clock reinforcements for the king came up, and the 
Lancastrians gave way when nearly 40,000 men, about three-fourths 
of whom were of the " Red Rose," lay dead and maimed on the 



The Bi iti I !cs 

•i the purs mi on the 

' this 

.1 a hair later the <>M men of the 
: " still talked of the gory bn 
lown through their sin II and 

ir.l fled ■ 
urvived the battle and the rout i 
In i 4'm- ;lt 'I- Igcley Moot and at ; i in 

were VlCtOI 

I the u iiter of li rred in or after the 

1 hen tame a quarrel with Warwick, j lined by the 
Both had to flee to Fra 
where tbeycame to an understanding with the indomital 

in a furl plai e her imj husband 

e throne. When Warwick, in ij;o, landed in England, he 
I l.dward, in In-, turn, fled I 

■:<>in hi* brother-in-law, Duke 
I, returned in the spring "! 1471, and I 

. and the La .it the bat; net, 

the " K: his life on the held. I 

mouth, in.- 

iry early in M 
: the north country. 

the Uttd 
the d m in the battle or pursuit, not brutally inur«: 

in 1 I b) I rv Irian writers, and the final 

i 
n, and m 
until the sudden We may 1 

in <>f th 
\:nl to Jun 

. 

• l 

H 



314 A History of the World 

free trade in books between England and the Continent, and in 
freeing the villeins (serfs) on crown-lands. Two statutes guarded 
the rights of owners of land, made precarious by the numerous 
forfeitures and transfers of estates during the war which had almost 
destroyed the old baronage. In June, 1485, Henry of Richmond, 
having won over Yorkists by an undertaking to marry Edward IV.'s 
daughter Elizabeth, now heiress to the crown on that side, landed 
with a small force at Milford Haven to fight for the crown. He 
had a claim by descent, on the mother's side, from John of Gaunt, 
and he was a Tudor through his father, son of Owen Tudor, a 
Welsh gentleman, and of Katharine, widow of Henry V. At the 
battle of Bosworth Field, in the south of Leicestershire, in August, 
1485, the last engagement of the Wars of the Roses ended in the 
defeat of Richard III., and his death as, hopeless of a good issue, 
and doomed in case of capture or survival, he hewed his way with 
desperate valour, seeking to slay his rival, towards the spot where 
Richmond's banner was waving. He was cut down after killing 
the bearer of the standard and when he was on the point of closing 
with Richmond. The crown which he wore on his helmet had 
fallen, and was at once placed, amid the shouts of the victors, on 
the head of the man who was hailed as " King Henry." The 
brutality of the age, the time in which chivalry had clearly perished, 
was shown in the treatment accorded to the remains of one of 
its bravest warriors. The body of Richard was flung across a 
horse, and thus, besprinkled with mire and blood, it was taken 
to Leicester and buried in the church of the Grey Friars. 

The Stuart line of Scotland came to the throne in 1370 in the 
person of Robert, High Steward of Scotland, only son of Robert 
Bruce's daughter Marjory and of Walter, High Steward, which word 
became a surname and was written " Stewart," changed to " Stuart." 
During the reign of Robert II. (1370-1390) the treaty of mutual 
assistance and defence was renewed with France, and the only 
warfare consisted of border-raids, including the famous fight of 
Otterburn or Chevy Chase, in Northumberland, between the 
Scottish Earl Douglas and Earl Percy of Northumberland. Robert 
III. (1390-1406) had a reign of some trouble due to quarrelsome 
barons and the feuds of Highland clans. In 1402 a Scottish in- 
vading force was defeated, under another earl of Douglas, by the 
English under Percy, the famous " Hotspur," at Homildon Hill, in 
Northumberland. The Stuarts, as is well known, were a hapless 
race. James I. (1406-1437) was for the first 18 years of his 



The British Isles 

•i a rnptr. ei in a ship on his « 

■ 
• 1 under ihe care ol H 

1 •) i ; i i . . I 

• 
■ i ' 

I I • turn i:i i . ■ . «1 him- • 

(»f law, justii Icr ; 

the : n «>f the ; the 

• • .- e in 

nun rth l>y i I inders in th 

bani i II. (1437 ' : ' ' ' *' ;i ' on 8 minorii . a 

frequent evil in Scotland. I and 

.1 - anm n 
e, held by the English. | [II. (141 

s us to the cml of the period under review, had 
I irried M 

her the ' 1 S tlanda b rt of the 

tk man, giv< n up to 
1 the pursuit alter the battle of Saw hieburn, 

e and prosperity was that 
whii h she lacked for < enturies after • t " under 

nment under a . with a permanent 

in 1 "i that, I left in a 

id whole 
and turmoil. 1 baronial I the 

I 1 I I others— were in < onfli< 1 with 

the : 1 other chieftains. In 1315 

l 

v ■ • 

I Irish 1 In 

I 1 



3 16 A History of the World 

The Ormonds and the powerful Kildares, whose stronghold was 
near Dublin, were exceptions. In 1367 Edward III. turned his 
attention to the country, and the Statute of Kilkenny was passed 
to check this tendency towards Irish ways of living. Marriage and 
fosterage between the English and Irish were forbidden, as high 
treason. No goods of any sort were to be supplied to the Irish. 
No Irish could be admitted into any English monastery or church- 
livings. War with the natives was enjoined as a duty for all good 
English " colonists." No Irishman, with rare exceptions, could 
plead at any English court, and the killing of an Irishman was not 
to be reckoned as a crime. The speaking of the language of the 
country was made penal. This most pernicious and foolish legisla- 
tion seems, in fact, intended to create a perpetual enmity between 
the English and the Irish, instead of seeking to form a united nation 
by conciliatory measures, and as the English were unable to root 
out the natives, a state of war existed for centuries. The settlers 
of the Pale were grossly ill-treated, under the harshest form of the 
feudal system, by the barons, and were exposed to the constant 
enmity of the natives outside. The result was that large numbers 
of the English fled away from the Pale, and, dwelling among the 
natives and marrying Irish wives, became Irishmen, whose 
descendants were to be, in coming time, the most dangerous foes 
of the country which might, by judicious measures, have retained 
their allegiance and affection. 

In 1394 Richard II. landed at Waterford with a great host of 
men-at-arms and archers, but effected nothing, during a stay of nine 
months, towards strengthening the position of the dwellers in the 
Pale against the native chieftains. Many of these came in and 
made submission by word of mouth, but in 1399 Richard had to 
come again with as great an army, and vast supplies of stores and 
arms, in order to suppress native risings. The English sovereign 
was quickly recalled by news of the duke of Lancaster's landing in 
England, and he returned to meet only, as we have seen, dethrone- 
ment, imprisonment, and death. Amid the disorder which ensued, 
the most ferocious English legislation against the natives, making 
Irishmen beings to be killed at sight, on mere suspicion of ill-doing, 
by colonists, was of no avail. The history of the unhappy country 
at this time is one of general carnage and rapine, as the baronage of 
the Pale made raids on the rest of the country, and the natives 
made forays on the property of the Pale. The churchmen of the 
two parties cordially hated each other. A Parliament, consisting of 



Scandinavia — the Netherlands 317 

a few barons, knights, bishops, abbots, and burgesses, met occasion- 
ally in different towns, but there was nothing done except voting of 
money, and the land went drifting on to ruin. In 1449 there was 
an excellent English viceroy in Richard, duke of York, who won 
the favour of Irish and English by his firm and kindly rule for two 
years. His Irish popularity gave his son Edward, at Towton, a good 
body of Irish Yorkist partisans, under the leadership of the earl of 
Kildare. An Irish Lancastrian leader, the earl of Ormond, was 
taken in the battle, and beheaded, with the loss of all the family- 
lands, a blow from which the Ormonds (Butlers by name) were long 
in recovering. The house of Kildare, rival of the Ormonds, now 
became supreme, generally acting as deputy-rulers for the English 
sovereign. The triumph of the " Red Rose " at Bosworth replaced 
the Butlers in possession of their lands, and one of them was 
created earl of Ormond. 

In Scandinavia we find that Sweden had never taken kindly to 
the Union of Calmar, and was often engaged in fierce hostilities 
with Denmark, in favour of which country there was a strong party 
amongst the nobles and higher churchmen. Some of the nobles, 
and the mass of the people, the peasantry, were enthusiasts for 
national independence. In 1434 the men of Dalecarlia, patriots 
and lovers of freedom beyond all other Swedes, revolted under the 
leadership of an owner of mines, and peace was restored only by 
the appointment of a native noble as viceroy, ruling in conjunction 
with the mine-owner. During the latter half of the 15th century 
the country was generally under the enlightened rule of native 
independent sovereigns. 

We have hitherto seen little or nothing of the country called 
the Netherlands, the region now forming Belgium and Holland. 
The northern part of this territory, in its physical formation, is 
exactly like Lower Egypt, as being the creation of a great river 
through the deposits from currents of the water made sluggish, on 
approaching the sea, by division into many channels. Holland was, 
in fact, made by the Rhine. Most of Belgium is a monotonous 
flat, perhaps owing its existence to the retreat of shallow marine 
waters. The Hollanders, and the western coast-people, are mostly 
of Teutonic race, or Flemish ; those of the south-western region, or 
Walloon country, are largely of Celtic origin. In ancient Roman 
days, the territory between the arms of the Rhine was called Batavia, 
and the people became allies of Rome. They were at last merged 
in the swarms of the Frisian and Frankish tribes. The mediaeval 



31 8 A History of the World 

Holland, then including the land which was buried by an irruption 
of the sea in the 13th century, and made into the Zuyder Zee, was 
under the rule of Karl the Great, the people keeping their native 
customs and the Frisian laws which asserted the freedom of their 
race. In the 10th century, when the great ruler's empire had been 
broken up, we find the northern country, after its conversion to 
Christianity, partly by force, partly by the persuasion of missionaries 
already noted, subject to a count of Holland and a bishop of 
Utrecht. In the southern Netherlands there were many petty 
sovereigns, of whom the chief were the dukes of Brabant and 
counts or earls of Flanders. These small autocrats were ever at 
issue among themselves, and feudal despotism prevailed, except in 
Brabant. We have seen some of the nobles, as Godfrey of Bouillon 
and the counts of Flanders and Hainault, engaged in the Crusades. 
Those expeditions reduced the barons' power in the expenditure of 
their resources, and the influence of territorial lords received a great 
shock in the battle of Bouvines, in 12 14 where we saw Philip 
Augustus of France inflict a severe defeat. 

A new epoch for the country began at this time. Towns rose to 
importance, buying charters of freedom from impoverished lords, 
with fixed payments of dues. The citizens thereby secured the 
right of being tried by their own magistrates, and all enjoyed 
personal freedom. Every freeman, in order to exclude runaway 
serfs, and mere vagabonds and outlaws, from municipal privileges, 
was enrolled in a trade-guild. We have already noted the great 
increase of commerce due to the Crusades, and the Netherlands 
did not fail to benefit therefrom. A chief source of the growing 
prosperity was the weaving of woollen and linen cloth. Large fleets 
of Dutch and Flemish ships traded to Spain and Languedoc, and 
Flanders was a great mart for England and all northern Europe. 
The population grew fast, and all parts of the country were tilled. 
Eastern goods collected at Venice and Genoa were sent over the 
passes of the Alps to the Rhine, and thence conveyed by the river 
to Bruges (Brugge, the "city of bridges"), with her many canals, 
now so fair in her decay. This town became a northern Venice, and 
one of the greatest commercial places in Europe, as the chief entre- 
pot for both Mediterranean and northern merchandise. Ghent 
became famous for her woollen manufactures, and by the end of the 
13th century was one of the largest towns in Europe, much exceeding 
the Paris of that age. The burghers of the Netherlands became 
very powerful, having armed forces far superior to those of the 



The Netherlands 319 

feudal lords. In 1302, when Flanders had been annexed to France, 
the men of Bruges arose against an oppressive governor, and utterly 
defeated a great French host, under Philip le Bel (IV.), at the battle 
of Courtrai. In Brabant freedom grew, and a legislative and judicial 
council arose, of whose 14 members only four were nobles, and ten 
were chosen by the people. At Ghent, in 1338, under Jacob van 
Arteveldt, the people drove out all nobles and adherents of the 
count of Flanders, and it was a fleet of their ships which greatly 
aided Edward III. in his naval victory of Sluys. The famous Philip 
van Arteveldt of Ghent asserted the self-government of the city 
against another count of Flanders, but in 1382 Charles VI. of 
France, after some defeats, routed the Flemings at Roosbeke, 
between Courtrai and Ghent, the patriotic Van Arteveldt being 
among the slain. 

Early in the 15th century the country came under the control of 
Philip of Burgundy, whose dominions extended from the foot of the 
Alps to the German Ocean, including the " overlordship " of all 
the 17 provinces of the Netherlands. The country was then very 
prosperous, and fully enjoying the freedom provided in her charters. 
The municipal bodies had much influence over the sovereign and 
the nobles of the Council. In the assemblies of the States, the 
stadtholder represented the prince in his absence, intervening 
between the nobles and the towns, on questions of taxation, as a 
check on both parties. The jealousy of the to\yns with regard to 
each other, and municipal isolation, were ultimately very detrimental 
to the cause of freedom. We may here note, as an important 
element in the prosperity of the Netherlands, the herring-fishery of 
the Flemings and the Dutch. Cured fish were of great value as 
diet in days when the lack of all winter-food for cattle, except hay, 
compelled people to eat salted provisions during several months of 
the year. The Church-fasts also caused a great consumption, and 
the North Sea fisheries were a very mine of wealth, coming next to 
the manufactures and trade, and serving as a school of skilled and 
sturdy mariners for the future Dutch navy. Philip of Burgundy, as 
guardian of his cousin Jacqueline of Hainault, one of the ablest and 
the most beautiful ladies of her time, had sworn to maintain the 
privileges and institutions of the Netherlands. Villain as he was, 
he first robbed his ward of her possessions, and then informed the 
cities and estates of the Netherlands that he considered his oaths of 
no effect, unless he chose to renew them. In 1435 ne compelled 
the Flemings to aid him in a war with England, their best friend 



320 A History of the World 

in the way of commerce. An insurrection took place in Bruges, but 
the city was blockaded, to the ruin of her trade for the time, and 
with the death of many thousands from famine. The citizens had 
then to pay an enormous fine, and leave their privileges at the 
Duke's mercy. In 1448, Ghent rose against unjust taxation, but 
the city was compelled to submit to a heavy fine and loss of 
municipal rights, after a contest of four years. The death of Philip 
in 1467 brought to power his son Charles the Bold, or " Rash," 
" Headstrong," as his French name (le Temeraire) is better rendered. 
The new ruler engaged in warfare with Louis XL of France, and 
oppressed the Netherlanders with grievous exactions in order to 
meet his expenses. The government became a mere despotism, 
and it was a great relief when Charles, in 1477, fell in battle against 
the Swiss. His daughter and successor, Mary of Burgundy, granted 
the " Great Privilege," the Magna Charta of the Netherlands, by 
which natives alone could hold office, and no taxes could be 
imposed, or war undertaken, without the consent of the estates. 
Provision was also made against arbitrary imprisonment, and the 
constitution of the Netherlands became the freest hitherto seen in 
any country. In a few years Mary died from a horse-accident, and 
the rule of the country came to her little son Philip, whose father, 
Maximilian of Hapsburg, then " King of the Romans," or heir to 
the headship of the " Holy Roman Empire," conquered the cities 
one after another, revoked the Charter, slew the chief burghers, and 
brought the Netherlanders again under practically absolute rule. 

In France, Philip IV., surnamed Le Bel (the Fair), ruled from 
1 285-13 14. He found himself in a time of transition from feudalism 
to the modern system, and was in sore want of money to meet the 
expenses of large bodies of civil servants needed for administration, 
and of mercenary troops and hired fleets for war. His warfare with 
the Flemings has been given, and the expenditure in this contest 
brought a serious quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII., who resented 
the French king's taxation of the ecclesiastical property in his 
realm. In 1301, the violent occupant of the Papal chair issued a 
" bull " asserting his supremacy over all kings. Philip had the 
document burned, and another instrument of the same kind, with a 
threat of excommunication, brought matters to a crisis. In 1303, 
Boniface was seized by Philip's emissaries, and treated with gross 
indignity, and he died shortly after the occupation of Rome by 
French troops. The election of a Frenchman (Clement V.) as 
Pope then brought a reconciliation between the king and the 



France 321 

- h. T! ■ Philip IV. n l< for the establishment 

ment, which was a ju li< ia), n"t 

and I 1 iaJ matti ill 

their representative itiea 

', or " thii ' in the 

neral, the other 1 

and the nobles. On tl 1 < arles IV., in 1 ;--;■<. tin- i.ist of 

no male 
heir remaininj Ider line <>f tin- I - iu\ law, 

lit in tii- II 
I n'lip \ I i, nephew 

Philip 1 \ and 

rs John II. 

tdful 

■ ailed th . ••• .;n the n 

: for the lower class in ] 

driven t>> m 
t> pillage m the war, and they committed \ere 

in like fashion. 
. : : 

die the u 

■v \ I., was .i' km . to the n 

t, in 

timid, and 

I 

■ 
t" 1 1 

and m the 1 to his ca 

• •! ><( the du) 

. I . 1 i 

■ 
I 



322 A History of the World 

bank of the Loire s with suburbs extending far on the southern side, 
connected with the town by a strong bridge, was entrusted to the 
earl of Salisbury, one of the bravest, most skilful, and most 
experienced of the English generals, trained to war under Henry V. 
It was now, for the first time, that any great use of cannon was 
made in siege-operations, and the possession of two towers called 
the Tourelles, at the southern end of the bridge, enabled the English 
to rake some of the principal streets. On October 23rd, 1428, 
this important position was stormed by the French, and the hopes 
of the besieged rose higher when Dunois and La Hire arrived with 
reinforcements, and the earl of Salisbury was killed by a cannon- 
shot. The bridge across the river had been broken down by the 
French, and access to the town was thus cut off on the south. 
The new English commander, the earl of Suffolk, then resorted to 
blockade, aiming at a surrender through famine. Early in 1429 
the lines of works round the place were nearly finished, and provisions 
were growing scarce in Orleans. At the " Battle of Herrings," 
fought at Rouvrai, a French attack on a great convoy of salted fish 
and other stores for the English troops in Lent was defeated, and 
the fate of the city seemed to be settled when a wonderful young 
woman appeared, backed by the power which the pious describe 
as faith, and which sceptics decry as superstition. 

Jeanne Dare (absurdly translated as " Joan of Arc "), heard 
of before this crisis as La Pucelle, or The Maid, was daughter of 
a small farmer in the hamlet of Domremy, on the borders of 
Champagne and Lorraine. Her fancy fed, as she tended her father's 
flocks, on legends of saints, and her soul brooded over her country's 
miserable condition. After hearing voices and seeing visions, she 
made her way, in soldier's garb, to the presence of the king, 
and at last induced him to believe in her mission to save France 
from the English. In April, 1429, she took the field clad in a new 
suit of white armour, mounted on a black war-horse, and bearing 
a lance in her right hand. Her unhelmeted head showed fair, 
expressive features, deep-set earnest eyes, and long black hair. A 
page carried before her a banner of white satin, strewn with the lilies 
of France, and bearing the words Jesus, Marie. The hearts of the 
troops were won at the outset by the sight of her fine figure, her 
skill in horsemanship, and her grace and ease in handling her 
weapons, which included a small battle-axe and a consecrated sword, 
taken at her bidding from one of the shrines of St. Catharine. In 
order to understand the success now achieved by Frenchmen 



I nice 

men of the sam the \ icton ol Ci and 

rt, we in mber the immen • of faith, or 

nne firm! I her 

to be t: 

led by tl. 
the 

■ 

the ■ 

1 I at the h( 

lime brought su|iplics up the river. It 

more th .... 

on t . named " Rouen," " P 

■ th the I" tired. 

In June re won by tl 

I . 17th, about I iter the first inten 

with the kn 1 her promise of 51 •,_ 1 

med at the ancient cathedral of Rheims. 
by the high altar, with hei mner in her hand, h. . 

I men by her v.. ithless na 

Her tragii .il fate, aftei 

jit.- f>r tl. .. ainl her delivery to the enemy 

rther remark than th • ndemned 

I the 
. the trial U i by 

in, bisho] hmen in 

the ■ rime committed, thn 

•try, 1)V re: In 1 ; 

trul, the 

ruin I • ■ 1 ;••' ' 

nl died \ 

. 

i 
I 

1 I 



324 A History of the World 

conquest was thus brought to an end, and England was saved, in 
fact, from being an appendage of France, and involved in all her 
Continental wars. 

Louis XI. (1461-1483), son of Charles VII., was one of the 
most crafty and perfidious politicians of his time, but he wrought 
great good for his country in the consolidation of her power. The 
power of the Church was reduced, and her privileges were curtailed. 
Appeals to Rome were forbidden, and the rights of the Gallican 
(French) Church were defined. The strength of the great feudal 
barons was brought down. After the battle of Montl'hery, in 1465. 
against a league composed of the dukes of Brittany, Lorraine, 
and other nobles, a treaty gave great advantages to Louis. On 
the death of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, his duchy was annexed 
to France, and the extinction of the house of Anjou in 1480 added 
Anjou, Provence, Maine, and Lorraine to the dominions of Louis. 
Several powerful nobles were executed on various charges. By 
immoral means, the feudal power which had served its time, and 
was now only harmful to peace, order, and sound government, 
was destroyed, and the power of the bourgeoisie, or citizens of 
towns, was enhanced by the sanction of free election of magistrates, 
the granting of command of the local watch, and other privileges. 
Industry and trade were greatly encouraged, and with Louis XI. 
the mediaeval system in France almost came to an end. His son 
and successor, Charles VIII. (1483-1498), was but T3 years of 
age, and the administration was in the hands of his eldest sister, 
Anne de Beaujeu, a lady of great ability. A rebellion, headed 
by the dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and Brittany, utterly failed in 
1488, and the marriage of the king with Anne, the duchess of 
Brittany, in 1491, added the last great feudal territory to his 
dominions. His invasion of Italy is related elsewhere. His death 
occurred by accident in 1498 at the castle of Amboise, as he was 
planning great administrative reforms for the country. 

Chapter II. — Eastern and Central Europe : Russia, Poland, 
Hungary ; Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia. 

The origin of the name "Russia" is unknown. During the 10th, 
nth, and 12th centuries the country had a number of free 
democratic republics, with their centres at great trading towns 
such as Kieff (Kiev), the entrepot of commerce with Greece and 
Asia; Novgorod, dealing with Germany and Scandinavia; Smolensk, 



Russia 325 

and Polotsk. Christianity was received, in the Greek Church form, 
from Constantinople, and the ecclesiastics aimed at introducing into 
Russian life the monarchical form of rule. There were number- 
less petty wars among the states, which had no other bonds of 
unity than those of language and religion. Territory was being 
won towards the east, and colonies settled on Finnish soil. A 
kind of feudal system arose under the boyars, men of wealth and 
power in town and country. In the 13th century, the land was 
overwhelmed by Mongol (Tartar) invaders from central Asia, united 
into a great confederacy by the famous Genghis Khan. They 
had already conquered vast territories in their native continent, 
and soon became masters of much of eastern Europe. The 
religion and landowners of Russia, and the authority of the princes, 
did not suffer much, but the rulers had to receive investiture 
from the Mongol Khan resident in Asia. The two centuries of 
Mongol supremacy retarded the development of civilisation, as the 
princes adopted Oriental ways. 

In 1325 the town of Moscow received new importance in 
becoming the metropolitan city of the Church, and was a centre 
of authority and influence over neighbouring principalities. To- 
wards the end of that century the place was taken and burnt 
by the ruler of one of the Mongol khanates which had been 
existing, during this period, alongside of the Russian principalities, 
but the city soon recovered from the blow, and the Moscow 
principality grew under the rule of Vassili I. and II. (1389-1462). 
We may note that the republic of Novgorod, in the north-west, 
had never been conquered by the Mongols, and the Russian saint, 
a perfectly historical character, Alexander Nevski (" of the Neva ") 
derives his surname from his defeat, on that river, in 1240, of the 
Swedes who invaded his Novgorod territories. In 1462 Ivan III., 
son of Vassili or Basil II., became ruler at Moscow. He was an 
ambitious and able man, and set himself to the work of creating 
a strong independent state. He married a niece of Constantine 
Palaeologus, last of the Greek emperors, and she brought to his 
court a large retinue of Greeks whose political ideas were autocratic. 
Ivan then assumed the title of " Ruler of all Russia," and adopted 
the arms of the fallen Byzantine empire. In 1481, he took possession 
of Novgorod, put to death many boyars and wealthy merchants, and 
completed the ruin of the republic and its trade by the removal 
of inhabitants and the subsequent pillage of the marts. The 
Mongol pow y er had long been declining, partly from divisions among 
22 



326 A History of the World 

the khanates, and the retreat of their forces, without attacking 
Ivan's host, when he had refused to pay further tribute, in 1480, 
may be regarded as the end of Mongol influence. Before his death 
in 1505 Ivan had won territory from the Poles and Lithuanians, 
and the foundation of a solid state had been laid. 

The name " Poland " appears first in that of a tribe, the Poliani, 
of the western branch of the Slavonic race, dwelling between the 
Oder and the Vistula. In the 10th century the Poles received 
Christianity in the form of the Latin or Western Church, and were 
thus from the first antagonistic, in point of religion, to the Russians. 
The first Polish bishopric was founded at Posen, and under Boleslas I. 
(992-1025) the kingdom was extended beyond the Oder, the 
Dniester, and the Carpathians. Many new cities were built, trade 
grew, and monasteries and schools were established. Boleslas III. 
(1102-1139) was an energetic warrior-king, who annexed Pomerania. 
At this time, and for a long period, the country was only a duchy. 
In the 13th century there was much trouble with the conquering 
Teutonic Knights, and then with the Mongols. Poland was, at 
this time, largely colonised by Germans and Jews. About 1295 
the country became again a kingdom, and under Ladislaus I. 
( 1 305-1 333) the first Polish " diet " or parliament was summoned. 
His son Casimir the Great 1333-1370) did much for the country, 
in the increase of trade, laying the foundation of law, and annexing 
Galicia. The Jagellon. dynasty, which endured for nearly two 
centuries, was started in 1386 by Jagello, last of the hereditary 
grand-dukes of Lithuania, who succeeded his father-in-law, king of 
Poland, and changed his name to Ladislaus II. Poland and Lith- 
uania were thus united, and the kingdom became for nearly three 
centuries the chief power of eastern Europe. Under Casimir IV. 
(1447-1492) successful war was waged with the Teutonic Knights, 
and western Prussia, including Pomerania and the cities of Thorn 
and Danzig, was annexed. At this time the Polish nobility had 
a great increase of power, receiving the right of choosing deputies 
to attend the diet, when they could not be present in person. 
The power of the diet was also so much enhanced that the govern- 
ment became that of an oligarchy rather than a monarchy, and 
the Polish kings could control affairs only through personal 
influence. 

It was under St. Stephen, the first king (997-1038), that the 
Hungarian nation began to pass from paganism to Christianity, and 
from barbarism to civilisation. This great and good man is still, to 



Hungary 327 

the Hungarians, for his patriotic wisdom, the " Alfred " of their 
history, and on August 20th, his anniversary, his embalmed right 
hand is carried in a splendid procession through the city of Buda, in 
sight of all the people. He endowed the Church with the utmost 
liberality, founding bishoprics and abbeys. He established royalty 
on a firm basis, with due regard to the ancient privileges of the 
nobles. The royal domains and privileged cities were alone directly 
ruled by the sovereign. The Church and the nobility had self- 
government, with appeal to the king. The royal towns chose their 
own judges and other officials. The bulk of the people, various 
classes of bondmen and servants, were under the authority of the 
landowners. Many of the existing institutions of the country, as 
the ecclesiastical system, and the municipal and county councils, 
and the original form of the Diet of the States, or Parliament, were 
founded by this first monarch of the realm. Under this Arpad 
dynasty, as it is called from an early ruler, which was in power for 
three centuries, there were troubles with attempts at a revival of 
paganism ; contests with German emperors ; a terrible Mongol 
invasion ; and, in the last century of the period, anarchy from 
oligarchical excesses. In 1222, the document styled the "Golden 
Bull," a Magna Charta of Hungarian nobles, gave great privileges to 
that class, afterwards extended to the clergy and lower nobility. 
The diet was to be annually summoned, and the right of armed 
resistance to a sovereign's illegal acts was granted. In 1301 the 
house of Arpad became extinct, and in 1309 a good king was found 
in Charles Robert of Anjou. During his reign, lasting till 1342, he 
did much to advance civilisation, developing the rich mining-industry 
and other branches of trade, and creating an army by the introduction 
of the Western system of chivalry which proved attractive to the 
great lords. 

Under Louis the Great (1342-1382) Hungary became the most 
powerful nation in central Europe. His arms were successful 
against the Mongols and the Servians. Venice was forced to cede 
Dalmatia and to pay tribute. A great Turkish army was routed on 
the banks of the Maritza, and in 1370 Louis became king of 
Poland. He was one of the greatest of Hungarian monarchs, 
always victorious in battle ; a promoter of the arts of peace ; a giver 
of enduring legislation ; an improver of ecclesiastical and judicial 
institutions ; a liberal patron of learning. After a period of disorder 
and decline, including defeat by the Turks and the Venetians in the 
days of the king Sigismund who was also emperor of Germany in 



328 A History of the World 

the latter part of his life, a revival came under an insignificant 
monarch, through the exertions of a brave soldier, skilful general, 
and prudent and energetic statesman, John Hunyadi, the chancellor 
of the kingdom. He won his first renown in fight against the 
Turks, and became an object of admiration to Europe, as well as 
the idol of his country, in the same cause. His victories, gained 
against great odds, were of an astounding character, due to a 
combination of craft and of desperate courage rarely equalled. In 
1444 Hunyadi was gaining another triumph over the Moslem foe 
near Varna, when defeat was due to the king's rashness in en- 
countering the best troops of the enemy. He was quickly slain, and 
a panic arose among the Hungarians when his pale head, in his 
silver helmet, was suddenly displayed aloft on a pike. Under 
another sovereign, named Ladislaus, Hunyadi sustained one defeat 
from the Turks, through the treacherous conduct of a subordinate, 
but in 1456 he scattered a vast Turkish host under the walls of 
Belgrade, with the loss of 40,000 men slain and 300 cannon. At this 
most glorious moment, worn out by fatigue, Hunyadi suddenly died. 
A noble specimen of a knight and a Christian hero, this great 
Hungarian, modest and unselfish as a monk in his life, wealthy 
enough to be always able to raise and pay 10,000 warriors, and 
spending his whole income on armaments against the Turks, left 
a noble successor in the son who was raised by election to the 
throne for his father's sake. 

Matthias Corvinus ( 1458-1490), perhaps the greatest of Hungarian 
kings, was an excellent commander, diplomatist, and statesman ; he 
was great as a legislator and judge ; a true lover of the people whom 
he ruled ; a munificent encourager of art and science. In the field 
of war he was his father's worthy son — courageous in action, masterly 
in organisation, the first general of his time. His training had been 
such that, at 15 years of age, when he became possessed of regal 
power, he was well fitted to cope with the duties of his post. His 
spirit in childhood had been stirred by the hearing of the ballads 
and legends that dealt with the deeds of Alexander and Attila, 
Roland, and other heroes of war. His reckless courage in battle, 
as he emulated the achievements of his idols, made his soldiers 
tremble for the man whom they followed. Conspicuous above all 
his noble qualities was the love of justice and truth which made him 
delight in exposing hypocrisy, and bringing to shame the braggart 
and the bully. In person he was deep-chested, broad-shouldered, 
and strong-limbed, and this athletic frame was topped by a massive 



Hung try 

well-cut head, in which of a hawk. II 

solution, and enduran unfailing, and no 

• a moment his iron n 
_ht him to the end H I war, with n 

is northern n< ■ < 

with the 

I i invel tan emj 

rick III. ami m 1485 Matthias took bis capital, Vienna, 

hni) out in a destitute condition. The 11 in irian army 

included a n Hy trained by the king on the 

Roman discipline, and that furnished by the 

adm I the Turkish host. All the hardships of war 

neral with the I ho adored him in 

■. ith the tendei I on. 

■: from w , Matthias rid a fine 

pie of royal dignity, magnanimity, and splendour of life. II 1 
tended t .rt, and his emba 

gnificent display. This model of a benevolent 
. c by the careful and impartial hearing 
which he 11 petitioners, from t t lord to the 

hum ibined with the framii 

lent I iws well enl ive him in his lifetime the tit 

iry in the ill current in 

II- ' K ing Matth 

He I with th( .md with the 

of his time, in gathering round 

him and lavishly ■ rt ol 

.: library, the ' med 

in t: la, the t halls b 

furnished, and the bool on whiti ound in 

.1 other ; The 

the work of the best artists of 1 

: trans. rihers and ' 

•it volun 

II . ■ i:ned, under Mat:' 

I 

1 amid 1 

hen a rul 



330 A History of the World 

In Germany Rudolf of Hapsburg (1273-1291) was a brave and 
successful emperor, who restored the judicial system set up by 
Frederick II., rid the country of robbers, and strove to prevent the 
pernicious private warfare between princes and nobles. His chief 
opponent was Ottocar, king of Bohemia, by far the most powerful 
prince of the empire, ruling with great tyranny also in Austria, 
Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. In 1278, he was defeated and slain 
in battle with Rudolf on the Marchfeld, near Vienna, and now 
began the territorial power of the Hapsburg house. Rudolf took 
possession of the duchy of Austria, with Styria, Carinthia, and 
Carniola, granting them as imperial fiefs to his two sons and his 
brother-in-law, count of Tyrol. His son Albert I. (1298-1308) was 
murdered by his nephew, and the empire passed to Henry VII., 
count of Luxemburg, who made a show of reviving the " Holy 
Roman Empire " by being crowned king of Italy at Pavia and 
emperor in Rome. His death by poison in 13 13 was followed 
by a terrible and devastating war between two elected emperors, 
Ludwig IV., of Bavaria, supported by the towns, and Frederick of 
Austria, son of Albert, acknowledged by the nobles. In 1322, at 
the battle of Muhldorf, Frederick was defeated and made prisoner, 
and Ludwig, crowned emperor in Rome, ruled till his death in 1347. 
In his time a stand was made against Papal claims by a declaration 
of the electoral princes, in 1338, that every legally chosen German 
king was thereby " Roman emperor " without Papal coronation. 
The independence of the empire was thus established, to the 
general satisfaction of the German cities and princes. 

The reign of Charles IV. (of Bohemia), emperor from 1347 to 
1378, a shrewd statesman and excellent linguist, founder of the first 
German university, that of Prague, is notable for the document 
called the " Golden Bull," from the gold case which contained the 
seal. This charter finally settled, in 1356, the Germanic constitution 
as regarded the electoral princes and the crown. Thereby the 
electors became independent, and the crown, the kingship of 
Germany, was deprived of power, except such as was derived from 
the possession of hereditary states. Henceforth there could be 
no civil war arising from double elections. All cases were decided 
by a majority of votes given by seven electors, always at the city 
of Frankfurt-on-the-Main. The electoral states were declared in- 
divisible and incapable of alienation, and were made hereditary 
in the male line, the electoral vote going with the land. The seven 
electors were the archbishops of Mainz (Mayence), Trier (Treves) 



1 rermany Bohemia 

.um\ ' ■ mi. i, the ( '« »t:nt 

of the Rhine, tin- and the 

I he H ;m.il 

Cai 

I 
I Germany, under whom the rol 
barons and the petty warfare were more pernicious than i 
n the Rhine and in Swabia, < omprisii 

liy 
tain municipal freedom, while 
rmed, by the minor lords and the imperial knights, 
me hand and the prii 

of the empire on the 01 t. We m.i\ lure note that m the 17th 
century two more electoral pi iria and Han 

The reign of Sigismund (141 

at his in neral 

f the ( hunh Tins assembly 

■ ('the empire and a kind of Europ 

I by the emperor. .1 I 
1 XXIII . .it this 

time lish, and Spanish 

with hun 

lent in the city. The council 
• r the thr< 

Papal power, and reforming 1 hui dine. 

I, and Martin V 
lurch-reform, in spite of t ; 
• 1 John I 
of the 1 

■ 
for I to confession, transul 

I if i House of I 

III. 

in » i 

■ 



332 A History of the World 

death. Germany was a scene of internal warfare between prelates 
and princes, which the emperor was unable to repress. An 
important event was the marriage of Frederick's son Maximilian 
with Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles, duke of Burgundy, 
by which the Austrian house received the Netherlands and Franche 
Comte\ or the " Free County " of Burgundy. The greatness of 
the House of Austria thus began, its power being derived not from 
the position of its heads as emperors, but from the rule of territory 
held by them as archdukes of Austria, kings of Hungary, and 
dukes of Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia. 

We must now relate the origin of one of the most flourishing 
minor states of the world, the Swiss republic which, in the 19th 
century, became a chief resort of European and American tourists 
in search of health and the charms of romantic scenery, and derives 
therefrom a large increase of wealth for her people. For British 
readers the story has the high interest attaching to a successful 
struggle for freedom carried on against enormous odds, and to 
the development of a little commonwealth which has maintained 
her independence for four centuries. Prior to the date at which 
we take up the history of Switzerland, the rugged country had been 
held by Alamanni, Burgundians, and Franks, and had been subject 
to Karl the Great, to kings of Burgundy, and to dukes of Swabia. 
Of the three original cantons, Schwyz, the one which ultimately 
gave its name to the country, was chiefly inhabited by free peasants ; 
in Uri and Unterwalden most of the people were mere serfs. 
Early in the 13th century the rulers of the country were the counts 
of Hapsburg, but the cantons soon began to strive for riddance from 
their jurisdiction. They were attached to the empire in a feudal 
relation by charters received from Frederick II., but the Hapsburg 
princes still claimed control of affairs, and in 1291 Uri, Schwyz, and 
Unterwalden formed a league. Schwyz and Unterwalden are mainly 
lands of verdant pasture, Uri a region of towering mountains and 
inaccessible rocks. The confederates (Eidgenossen) were not seeking 
to throw off allegiance to the emperors, but were hostile to the 
despotic power wielded by the " bailiffs " who represented them. . 
It is painful to have to dissipate fond beliefs which have been the 
delight of many generations of lovers of freedom, but we are bound 
to state, in the interest of historical truth, that there is no sound 
basis for the story of the oath taken by Stauffacher of Schwyz, Fiirst 
of Uri, and Von Melchthal of Unterwalden, in the meadow of Riitli 
or Griitli by the Lake of Lucerne, with the promise, still the motto 



Switzerland 

of t 

popular i"" tical ting the 

nply condense inl 
• time the contin on 

the three ' . 

in the i4tli 
ami the • 

n 1513 Hie story of William Tell, Gessler the 
g at the apple, i*> pure invention 

Of I later 

In 131 5. th< - had t<> defend them 

ntry in N 

with his elm 

ten No pi 
oitring w notice tl 

a helme.l by a downpour "f 1 

• -r the purp' «e <>n the 
vc them. I the n 
by a n the hill ol with halberds, ami 

the hostile force « itroyed. 

in 133*1 ''. v t,c adhesion <>( Lucei ! during this and the 

ef landowners, mainly 
by the 1 ■ 
■ 
addition of Zurich, rne. In July, 

Alien 
Id III. of A 
irten, invaded the country. The battle- 
ted by l»i 
• unsuita ry, hut the Austrian their 

• 

ted with 
■ 

. : 
: < apturin 

with • 

ind with • 
. in and n 



334 A History of the World 

Leopold fell in the thick of the struggle, and the matter ended 
with the slaughter of 700 nobles and 2,000 other men, while the 
Swiss lost little over 100. A vast booty was taken, but the 
moral effect of the victory was the chief gain of the day of 
Sempach. The defeat of a host of the knights and nobles of 
chivalry by a few hundred citizens and peasants astonished 
Christendom, and another Austrian defeat at Nafels, in Schwyz, 
'two years later, brought 50 years of peace with Austria, and virtual 
independence. 

In the 15 th century the confederacy had to meet other foes. 
In 1444 the dauphin pf France, afterwards Louis XI., invaded the 
country with 30,000 men, and at St. Jacques (St. Jacob), near Basel 
(Basle), 1,600 Swiss met them, and died fighting to the last man, 
after slaying 4,000 of their foes. Th ; s Swiss Thermopylae made 
Louis grant an honourable peace, and the confederate cause gained 
strength and honour. The ne- 1 enemy of Switzerland was Charles 
of Burgundy, and that powerful nonarch and headstrong warrior 
met more than his match. In January, 1476, when the Swiss, 
previously enticed into war against him, had been left alone by 
France, Charles opened the campaign with 50,000 excellent troops, 
and marched across the Jura. About 400 men surrendered at 
Granson, on the south-west edge of Lake Neuchatel, with a 
promise of safety, and were then all hanged or drowned in the lake. 
In March a federal army of 18,000 horse and foot, well trained and 
equipped, marched from Neuchatel, and encountered Charles at 
Granson. A complete victory, with enormous spoil, fell to the 
Swiss. In June another battle came at Morat, on the north-east 
side of Lake Neuchatel, and there, by good generalship and 
downright courage in charging and silencing the cannon, the Swiss 
gained a brilliant victory, with a loss to Charles of 1,500 nobles 
and 12,000 men, hundreds being drowned in the lake. 3,000 
men was the loss of the victors, and Murten (Morat) became in 
Switzerland a name of like power and pride with Morgarten and 
Sempach. In 1477 Charles fought his last battle, defeated and 
slain by Swiss troops at Nancy. By this time the confederacy had 
become a nation of the highest military repute, courted as an ally 
by France and Italy, by Emperor and Pope. Internal affairs were 
not so flourishing, owing to jealousies between the country-people 
and the towns, among which Zurich, Berne, and Lucerne were con- 
spicuous for wealth and population, influence and culture. The 
confederacy of the 13 cantons was completed by 15 13 in the 



B hemi.i 335 

urn 
ell. 
! !)>• the . •• SUn 

inten tion with the reform movement <>f Wy< lif, 

the . nn of t nation. The 

1 mtinent I 
for the prun i| shman. i ved 

their Christianity from the ' I stern Chun h, and not ft<>m 

the West, the Herman in.m model, and it wa 

I tuse with 

their Teutonic fellow-countrymen. Prom i ;io to 1 1 \~ the country 

of the 11 e of Luxemburg, and it was in the 

time of Wenzel <w IV. that John II II nd Jerome 

■l. Hus w.is the a »n ■•( .i 
■ of the I 
l • clerical 

the wrath <>f I in the city and d '1 the archbi 

i f r ■ tin tly functions. The common |> 

ned 

here'.i' al uttei Pop il ir riots in 

■,<1 in 1411 tfa - laid under Papal interdict 

1 .a the kn, 
ntcd hin 

... 

1 ■)" Wyclif 
1 to 

•■ent thither under 

ilation <>f 
that 1 md imprisoned In M 

nd in Jui 
t to 1 ' ' 

nit, (0 D 
I 

burnt t'> death on 

l the kh 
' I I 
. whi< h : ! on hia 

■ 

■ 
but 



336 A History of the World 

recantation, which was boldly withdrawn a few months later, Jerome 
went to the stake in May, 14 16. 

The result of these proceedings was a civil war. The utmost 
wrath was aroused by the fate of Hus and Jerome. The mob 
murdered "orthodox " ecclesiastics. In September, 1415, after the 
martyrdom of Hus,- 450 Bohemian nobles met in a " diet " at 
Prague, and solemnly recorded their confidence in the teacher 
and admiration of his personal character. Three days later they 
formed a league for maintaining the freedom of preaching in 
Bohemia, and declared their belief that the Scriptures were the 
rule for the Church. Excommunication by the Council followed, 
and the extreme party of Hussites rushed into war. A most able 
leader was found in Ziska, the most original and successful com- 
mander of that age. In a struggle of 12 years' duration the 
forces of the emperor were again and again defeated. This re- 
markable man was of noble birth, and, after being a page to king 
Wenzel, he took up a soldier's career. In 1410 he showed desperate 
courage at the head of the Bohemian and Moravian troops who 
decided the dreadful battle of Tannenberg against the Teutonic 
Knights, of whom the grand-master and many thousands of warriors 
remained dead on the field. After serving against the Turks, and 
at Agincourt with Henry V., he returned to Bohemia on the 
death of Hus. Taking the field in 1419, he defeated an army of 
40,000 men, sent by Sigismund to obtain the throne on the 
death of his brother, King Wenzel, with a hasty levy of one-tenth of 
that number. In 142 1, Ziska had conquered Bohemia and taken 
the castle of Prague, the country being held by the erection of 
fortresses. Ziska's followers were provided by him with small 
firearms, then little used .in war, but his most ingenious device 
was that of the laager, or waggon-fort, familiar to us from South- 
African warfare. It was by this means that he remedied his lack of 
cavalry. The waggons or chariots, linked together by strong iron 
chains, contained all the fighting-men (except the few horsemen), 
and the women and children who accompanied the armies. The 
vehicles were covered with steel, or iron, and on each of them the 
best marksmen were placed next to the driver. In action the 
waggons were usually formed in four lines or columns, and for an 
offensive movement the drivers at one end of the line of battle 
strove, often with success, to outflank the enemy. The wide plains . 
of Bohemia, with few ditches or fences, favoured this novel method 
of warfare, and the marksmen next to the drivers, as well as the 



I. . p 

■ 

. until 1. 

■ 
untii en the in 

of their demands from S 

by a< . the shrewd and 

.ind 
in the I Hungary, under 

n.i. 



1 : ; : I 

THE 

rick II. : no 

111. 
tion through hi- 

ght him 

1 1 

■ 

I ■ i 
injured the l 



33 8 A History of the World 

express doubts as to its character, and claims to supreme power. 
After the return of the Papal court to Rome, in 1378, there was 
trouble concerning rival Popes, a matter which, as we lately saw, 
was settled at the Council of Constance. The new and sole occupant 
of the Papal chair, Martin V. (1417-1431), was a wise administrator, 
and the Papacy, along with its secular possessions in central Italy, 
regained much of its old credit and spiritual and political authority. 
A new and higher position was assumed under Nicholas V. 
(1447-1455), a man whose genius had formed an ideal of a Papacy 
which should impress the world by an aspect of greatness, with 
Rome, the Papal city, as the protectress of the arts, the abode of 
learning, and the centre of all Christian culture, as well as the 
supreme seat of religion. This admirable chief Pontiff, devoted 
to the cause of peace and progress, assumed power at a critical 
period of the world's history, a few years before the downfall of 
the Eastern Empire which had passed through the period of intel- 
lectual darkness in Europe and connected the two great ages of 
light. It was at Constantinople that the masterpieces of Attic 
literature had been mainly preserved, and in 1453, when the 
fanatical Moslem were wreaking their destructive wrath, as we shall 
see, on the treasures of art and learning of which they could feel 
and understand nothing, a few humble German artisans, with little 
thought that they were creating a power far superior to that of 
princes and armies, were cutting and setting the first types for 
the rude original printing-press. This was the age of Nicholas V., 
the age which witnessed the disappearance of the last trace 
of the Roman Empire and the publication of the first printed 
book. He was well worthy of the time in which he rose to the 
highest place in Europe, for he was the greatest of all the restorers 
of learning, and a lover and patron of art as well as of literature. 
He was a man who had sprung from the common people, but whose 
abilities and acquirements had soon attracted the notice of the great. 
He had studied much and travelled far, visiting the British Isles, 
and living with the merchant-princes of Florence, the men who first 
ennobled trade by allying it with philosophy, eloquence, and taste. 
He had arranged the first public library of- modern Europe under 
the protection of the munificent Cosmo. To him the students of 
the University of Glasgow look back with gratitude as their founder. 
When he rose from a private station to the Papal throne, Nicholas 
never forgot the studies which had been his life's delight, and it 
was he who established the Vatican library, and took measures for 



I he l'.ip.u . \ Venice 

the careful pi n <>f t!u- 

which had been snatched from the wreck of the pire. 

>usy, in the 

ng <>r b 
•i which wei lu^ 

made <>f man 

: i i . 

eminent i the introduction t<> the 

know : the unrivalled ra historical 

r the names and illustrate ; nius <>f 

i. With this illustrious name, <>n the 

modern history, we leave the after noting that 

this N i holas \ 

ted the \ 

in ti 

jent little 

liefly in | n <>f 

.: • mainly h( Id by 

g with Naples in the 
h centui 

I the 
member 
I uble 

with I ' red b) their warlike mt 

• 

.llllllllM.lt. 

the nd the \ 

ml privil nted b) I 

in d. 
In t 

the 

Irorr. 



34O A History of the World 

first a temporary body of criminal judges appointed to inquire into 
a certain conspiracy, and then, in 1335, made a permanent institution, 
with supreme, plenary, inquisitorial authority and sovereignty over 
every individual in the state of Venice, and free from all responsi- 
bility and appeal. This body was annually chosen from the noblest 
and most esteemed citizens, at four different assemblies of the 
Great Council, for one year of office. Only one person from any 
family, or even of the same name, could serve at a time. There 
was no payment for the duties, and no other office could be held 
therewith. The acceptance of gifts was a capital offence. The 
Council of Ten exercised a tyranny beyond the reach of bribes, 
threats, or violence ; it was a dark, inscrutable body that ruled the 
republic with a rod of iron, and its existence was prolonged for 
five centuries. The " Lion's mouth," or the Council's letter-box, 
was a slit in the palace-wall for the reception of petitions, accusations, 
denunciations, and applications for the settlement of disputes, but 
no paper was accepted without a signature, and the discussion of 
the contents of each document was subject to many minute 
regulations and restrictions. The punishments inflicted by the 
Council ranged from fines, through torture, imprisonment, exile, and 
the galleys, to mutilation, and death by hanging, drowning, or 
strangling, inflicted either openly or in secret. The " Bridge of 
Sighs " was that by which the condemned were led to the dungeon 
of their doom. The oligarchical government of Venice has the 
glory of success in choosing skilful commanders, diplomatists, and 
other agents for the management of the affairs of the greatest 
mediaeval republic. 

In the 14th century a good trade was carried on with England 
and Flanders. Venice supplied the London market with sugar, 
and was paid in the shape of bales of wool, which were turned 
into cloth by Flemish looms, and then passed through Venice to 
Dalmatia and the Levant. The republic rose to the height of wealth. 
Silk-weaving was established by exiles from Lucca, and there was 
a great manufacture of mirrors and other fabrics in glass. There 
was much naval warfare with the Turks, and in iJ5^ a fierce 
contest arose with Genoa, due to rivalry in the Eastern irade. The 
Genoese had helped the Greeks to regain the empire from the 
Latins, and had received in return possession of the suburb of 
Galata, where they had great influence over political affairs at 
Constantinople. In 1352, in the waters of the Bosphorus, the 
Genoese gained a victory after severe loss to themselves, and in 



34 ' 

the' ' 

I 
I that in I 
t<> t In i • , • | the 

w.ir I 

the i I by the 

Gen t of I ►aim n to 

i them of the channels in the I 
line i 

■ 

upied the channel and 
< the road t<> the city, while 1 1 

i tuld bridle the bi 
In this extremity two Yet; 
admirals, with a t m the Levant and other 

i <>(' the G 
i them until they were (><■ irrender. Vi 

time to tl 

: her 
If over in 1396 to the 
rule of Charles VI. of I 

. in the 1 warfare in northern It. 

. other t 
1 with Italian 
■ 
•l 14 16, for the republican 9e< t. It 
: the height <>f 1, 

• ■ 

mainland ; owninj ;.ooo 

i in he 1 

■■ ■ 

■ 



342 A History of the World 

great expenditure with little profit. When the Turks were besieging 
Constantinople, and the emperor appealed to all Christendom for 
help, and especially to Venice and Genoa, the Adriatic state was unable 
to make any worthy effort on a scene of action where her interests 
were more concerned than those of any other power. Commercial 
considerations, after the fall of the great city, led Venice to make a 
treaty with the Moslem conquerors, but in 1462 a long war with 
the new Ottoman empire began, and in 1477 a great Turkish army 
entered Italy, and defeated the Venetians, ravaging the country 
until the fires could be seen from the top of St. Mark's. Previous 
to this, the Turks had conquered from Venice the town of Negropont, 
and the republic had suffered the shame of seeing her admiral look 
on, with sailors once renowned as foremost for skill and valour, 
without an effort to save his countrymen from a hideous massacre. 
In connection with the revival of letters we may note that the first 
Greek grammar compiled in Western Europe was published at Venice 
in 1484, and that there, though at a later date than at Florence 
and other Italian cities, there were many patricians who were 
students and patrons of the new learning. In 1489, the republic, 
by discreditable means, became possessed of Cyprus, having induced 
the widowed Queen Caterina Cornaro, a Venetian lady to forego 
her possession of the island. 

We now turn to Spain, to view the events which led to the 
expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula, and the consolidation 
of the Spanish monarchy. On the death of Alfonso X. of Castile 
in 1284, his eldest surviving son, Sancho, a man of vigorous 
character, called " the Valiant " for his prowess in warfare against 
the Moors, became king through the influence of the Cortes. 
In 1292, he conquered the important town of Tarifa, on the 
southern coast. Much trouble followed his death, three years 
later, owing to long minorities of his successors, bringing civil 
warfare, and one great defeat, near Granada, from the Moors. 
In 1309, however, Gibraltar was captured by the Spaniards, and 
in 1340, on the banks of the Salado, near Tarifa, a great Moorish 
host was routed by Alfonso and the king of Portugal. Four years 
later, after a long siege, Algeciras fell, and the Moslem power was 
further shaken. Passing over a long period of warfare between 
the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, and between each of them 
and the Moors, diversified by civil wars, partly due to disputed 
succession, we find Fernando, prince of Castile, in 141 1, elected 
king of Aragon. On his death in 14 16, Castile was nominally 



I M r Spain 

ruled until i . tan II., but 

nt of literature, art, and 

teaming. For th< part of the I in the 

ban iplished statesman, Al. I una, 

ie with some of I 

Datable «>f < lastile," he 

r, and < ommander <>f tlu- army. The |" 
rity as ! nained in power. 

In i . i \i> tint to hi 

and betrayal of a faithful servant I riod that 

■; us ornamei m<l roro 

- tin, and tournaments 
the chief amusement <>( t. Utei the death <>f Juan II. 

there 

the ' . 1 mmh fighting, to I 

the infidt 

. the marriage <>f Ferdinand 

lella, lu-ir • I . tile, 

minded lady whose hand had b night 

\ union <>f tins k n desired 

by the mosi . and 

the idmirably 

In to the t her 

1 thus, with the union of 
■ 
I iw in her 2<>th ■. 

■n, blue a 1 ruddy 

:;t, on h"th :'.>m the 

■ 

: had no authority in < 

I | 
rule 

■ 



344 A History of the World 

The peculiar institution called the Holy Brotherhood, a kind of 
democratic committee whose proceedings were directed by a central 
body comprising the chief citizens— a body which, in its interference 
with the course of justice, had been made an engine used against 
the Crown — was now adroitly converted into a tribunal of vast 
power in support of the executive government. The great nobles 
were cowed, and in a few years a great degree of order and security 
was restored. Hundreds of castles of robber-knights were destroyed, 
and summary execution of malefactors on the highway gave safety 
to travellers. Legislation reformed the courts of law, making justice 
speedy and of easy attainment. 

In her zeal for the souls as well as the bodies of her subjects, 
Isabella " the Catholic," as she was styled, unhappily established, 
or re-founded, the Holy Inquisition, for the extirpation of heresy. 
This measure was due to the influence of her confessor Torquemada, 
and of Ferdinand, in whose realm of Aragon it had long existed. A 
bull of Pope Sixtus IV. authorised the introduction of the "Holy 
Office" into Castile in 1478, its original object being the conversion 
of the Jews, who were alleged to be plotting the overthrow of the 
government. The Inquisition, in Spain, seems to have been really 
a state-tribunal, entirely under the control of the sovereign, and not 
specially connected with the Church or the Roman See. Some 
of the Popes protested against it, and strove to moderate its action, 
but they were obliged at last to tolerate what they could not suppress. 
Under the Dominican monk Torquemada, the first Inquisitor- 
General in Spain, who lived till 1498, some thousands of persons 
died at the stake during his 16 years of office, and his successors 
were also terribly severe. The Inquisition became a curse to Spain, 
and, as we shall see, to the Netherlands under a Spanish sovereign. 
It is asserted that Isabella assented with reluctance to the institution, 
and strove to mitigate its severities, but it is certain that, between 
1481 and 1492, 2,000 Jews were burnt alive in Andalusia, and that 
17,000 others were allowed to save their lives, submitting to im- 
prisonment, banishment, or loss of civic rights, only by surrendering 
the whole of their property, the funds being used by Isabella and 
Ferdinand to complete the work of centuries against the Moors. 

The Moslem inhabitants of Spain had been for two centuries 
dwelling in prosperity, sometimes tributary to the Christian kings, 
and often on friendly terms with the Catholics. Granada, their 
capital, was at the height of its splendour, the largest and richest 
town in the peninsula, capable of raising a well-equipped, trained 



The M rs in Spain 

--0,000 men, including some of the 

1 uxury li isly imp tired 

■ >f the Moors, and in an evil hour, in 1476, their 
I wantonly defied the 1 by 

:us annual tribute with th< 

I 

! with i: ' "f tins c hall' 

1 1481, the same M Hassan, stormed the 

nish frontier-fort of Zahara. tins 

:ar from (ira: 

i been deemed impregnable by the Moors, and the 

• mi, the 1 
rely felt as ad 
in t: :it of the Castilian chivalry. The 1 

- were forced to interfere wh 

I 11 king • 1 Granada reined on th<- appi 
. Andalusian host, nd Isab 1 at 

the I Of Moot 

' artillery and 
m1 1, but th<- M 
1 ;d the • 

■ . 

:ul munil 
from all | 
pie who had 

.rilhant bevy ol 

ridtr. I . ■...; \1 

I--, with mii< idal foil) . tom with 

I 

. . 

the : 

■ 

that 

nd then the 1 liranada, in 



346 A History of the World 

a fit of madness, closed the gates of the city in his face, and gave 
rule to his unworthy nephew B'oabdil. A heroic defence was made 
at Malaga, and an attempt to storm the citadel was repulsed with 
severe loss, the Moors piercing the Christians with well-aimed arrows, 
hurling down huge stones, and pouring on the assailants boiling 
pitch and rosin. Mining was then tried with some success, and 
for the first time in Spanish history some of the fortifications were 
blown up with gunpowder. All the Spanish chivalry was around 
the walls, with Queen Isabella to arouse their utmost courage and 
enthusiasm. The wooden towers of olden days, and the Roman 
testudo, or tortoise-shell of shields to protect men in undermining 
the walls, were tried in turn, but still the Moors held out. The last 
sally of their leader had been repulsed with dreadful loss, when 
famine came to decide the struggle, and Malaga was surrendered 
to the Christian forces. The whole of the brave survivors of the 
garrison, and 15,000 inhabitants, old men, helpless women, and 
tender maidens, some of high birth and gentle condition, passed 
into perpetual slavery. 

The war was then, in 1487, suspended for a time, to enable the 
sovereigns to visit Aragon and deal with disorders in that kingdom, 
and to raise reinforcements for the army which now firmly held the 
western part of the kingdom of Granada. Boabdil basely congratu- 
lated Ferdinand and Isabella on their success at Malaga, while 
Ez-Zaghal, holding the country from Jaen, north of Granada, to 
Almeria on the coast, rallied round his standard all patriotic Moors. 
He commanded there the rugged Alpuxarras mountains, with 
countless sheltered valleys, watered by streams from the Sierra 
Nevada, and rich in flocks and herds, oranges and vines, pome- 
granates and mulberries. Baza (or Baeza), the second city in 
importance now left to the Moors, lying east of Granada, was in his 
possession, and on its fate depended that of the capital. In 1488, 
Ferdinand took the field with 100,000 men, and at once attacked 
Baza. Repulsed again and again by Ez-Zaghal, the Spanish king, with 
the loss of 20,000 from hardship and disease, at last reduced the 
place by famine, after laying waste all the surrounding territory. 
The city was surrendered in December, 1489, the success being 
really due to the queen's resolute spirit, when others counselled 
the abandonment or postponement of the war. Ez-Zaghal, whose 
power was now broken, made submission, and was well treated, 
retaining his title of " king of Andalusia," with a small estate as 
vassal of Castile. Almeria was given up, and by this time little 



I M< ora in Sp.iin -$47 

more than the < itv of Granad I Ipril, 

d six month 
in which Christian and M ori . Itn i met in 

obai I . md the finest chiva there, 

hut even ha 1 not enable the Spaniards i the 

in batt irdinand 1 to 

rt to tliejid; ic. The whole country around the 

the iK-autiful and fertile »li^tri» t called the- 

at last the peO| B abdil to surrender. 1 he 

tulation I n the last day of 1491, and the t 

.redly most generous, and would have refl< 
- an, if they had only been observed. The 
; a million in Granada, were to have 

peif< Jion Of their prO| 

power to depart whil 1 they pleased, rhose wh 

rwn laws and 
inder the g< n< r.il - The 

and the lead entered 

Krhich had be d in 

of the king throughout ll I iwer, 

tile and waved in the hr 

iole host of ' . fell 

on th< ii . and the 

abdil (otherwise Abu 
1 of horsemen, met th< 

aand thi I the 

' the last 
til, on a spur of the Alpuv 

"ii the beautiful 
" Allahu 

like 
' what h( I 

the loss 

I in the 1 m of 

■ 
I . ... 

■ the 



348 A History of the World 

beyond the bounds of the period under review in order to complete 
this subject, and have now to note that the bigoted Cardinal 
Ximenes persuaded Isabella to persecute the Moors, or " Moriscos," 
as they began to be called, on the ground that to keep faith with 
infidels was to break faith with God. The mosques were closed, 
the manuscripts of Moorish learning were burnt, and Mohammedans 
were treated like Jews. Many yielded and became Christians in 
professed belief; others rebelled in the Alpuxarras hills, and defeated 
a force sent against them. They were driven off, however, to exile 
beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, where many Moors joined the 
corsairs of Algeria and the Barbary states, and took an ample 
revenge in their raids on Spanish commerce. The "converted" 
Moriscos were ill-treated by the Inquisition. Under suspicion of 
possible relapse, their children were taken from them, and the 
young men were sent to toil at the oar in the Spanish galleys. 
Philip II., in 1567, roused indignation by enforcing a decree which 
bade the Moriscos abandon their special dress, renounce bathing, 
their language r their customs and ceremonies, and their very names. 
This detestable tyranny, well worthy of its author, one of the most 
loathsome personages in history, provoked a serious rising in the 
Alpuxarras, which was only suppressed by two years of horrible 
warfare. Many of the Moriscos were made slaves, others went 
into exile, and some were transported to different parts of Spain. 
The raids of the Moorish corsairs on the coasts, ravaging the 
country for miles inland, and carrying off Christian captives, 
exasperated the Spaniards. Continued persecution drove more and 
more Moriscos from the country, and at last, in 16 10, the whole 
of the survivors, numbering about half a million, were exiled. It is 
believed that the number disposed of by banishment between the 
fall of Granada and the above date reached 3,000,000. At the final 
wholesale expulsion the children under four years of age were taken 
to be brought up as Christians, and all property was confiscated, except 
what could be turned into coin or carried on the person. Every kind 
of outrage was perpetrated on the miserable people as they made 
their way to the coast. Most of the men were farmers or agricultural 
labourers. The poets and painters of Spain celebrated the trans- 
action, which was a kind of suicide for the country, as a glorious 
event. It was really the extinction of light, and, save for a brief 
period during which the remains of Moorish culture lingered in 
the land, Spain was for ages under the darkness of bigotry and 
ignorance. With the disappearance of the enlightened Moriscos, 



Portugal 349 

whole tracts which had been rich in corn and wine and oil became 
deserts. Science gave way to superstition, skill to incapacity, 
learning to such brutal indifference to knowledge that Madrid, in 
the 1 8th century, had no public library — a contrast indeed to 
Cordova in the 13th century, where half a million volumes were 
gathered. The 16,000 looms of Seville soon became but a fifth of 
that number. Art and industry almost vanished from Almeria 
and Toledo. The land, devoid of the skilful irrigation of the 
Moors, became untitled. The populous cities of beautiful and 
fertile Andalusia decayed, and a horde of monks, banditti, and 
beggars replaced the merchants, scholars, skilled artisans, and agri- 
culturists of Moorish times. All history presents us with no more 
disastrous result of religious bigotry as regards dogmas, combined 
with utter disregard of the benign spirit of Christianity, than that 
which followed the expulsion of the Mohammedans from Spain. 

There is hardly an independent state in Europe, of old standing, 
which has not had her day of renown. Belgium, Servia, Roumania, 
Bulgaria, and the sixth " great power," Italy, are all modern. 
Greece, if she is ever to be worthy of her ancient name, has 
certainly not yet, in 1898, attained that point. Holland and 
Switzerland, still worthy of all respect, were both glorious in their 
rise. Sweden was at one time, as we shall see, in a leading 
position. There are countries once independent, now forming 
parts of great empires, which were famous in their day, as 
Tuscany (Florence), Venice, and Hungary. Turkey was formerly 
the terror, as she is now the standing nuisance, of the Christian 
nations of Europe. Spain was, three centuries ago, the chief 
power of the world. The mention of Spain brings us to the 
small kingdom of Portugal, geographically a part of the same 
great peninsula, with people of the same stock, and practically 
of the same language, as the Spaniards, and yet for more than 
eight centuries, save for an interval of 60 years, politically distinct. 
We have now to trace how it was that Portugal became a separate 
nation, and in what respect she was, for a time, in a most 
honourable way, the leading nation of Europe. Like Spain, she 
produced a race of heroes, when her people were free and well 
ruled, and a spirit of Christian chivalry led to conflict with the Moors, 
and like Spain, she sank into insignificance through the influence 
of absolute government administered by narrow-minded bigots. 
We note first that Portugal does not represent, as commonly 
supposed, the ancient Roman province Lusitania, which was a 



350 A History of the World 

district south of the Tagus, nor do the Portuguese represent 
a distinct branch of the Celtic population of the Iberian peninsula. 
Their early history is the same as that of the rest of the peninsula ; 
they were thoroughly Latinised in Roman days, with coloniae and 
municipia, or military settlements and self-governed towns, estab- 
lished at points suitable for trade such as Lisbon and Oporto. 

After the rise of Christian kingdoms in Gallicia, Leon, and 
Castile, and the winning back of much territory from the Moors, 
the history of Portugal as a separate country begins at the end 
of the nth century, when Henry of Burgundy, who had married 
a daughter of Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon, received from 
him the territory between the Minho and the Tagus as a dependent 
fief. Count Henry, a restless knight-errant, went off to the Crusades, 
leaving his " county " in charge of his wife Theresa. Under the 
administration of this beautiful and accomplished woman, who held 
power until 1128, a spirit of independence, as regarded Gallicia, 
arose and was carefully fostered by her. Her son Affonso 
Henriques, or Alfonso I. of Portugal, when he assumed power, 
as a man who united his father's chivalrous courage with his 
mother's political ability, made successful war on the king of 
Gallicia, and in 1143 became sovereign of an independent Portugal. 
For the period of 25 years he was in conflict with the Moors, 
assisted by the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers, and 
in 1 139 he gained a brilliant victory over the infidels at Orik 
or Ourique, in the Alemtejo. In 1147 the great town of Santarem, 
commanding the upper Tagus, was stormed, and this success was 
at once followed by the capture of Lisbon, in which Alfonso was 
helped by a body of English Crusaders, men of Norfolk, Suffolk, 
Hampshire, Bristol, and Hastings, on their way from Dartmouth 
to the Holy Land. This was the beginning of the enduring 
connection between England and Portugal, very important for the 
smaller country. Other conquests followed, and the Burgundian 
house of sovereigns was thus settled, for nearly four centuries and 
a half, on the throne of Portugal. Under the successors of 
Alfonso I. there were struggles with the Moors and with the 
clergy and nobles of the country. Sancho I., son cf Alfonso, 
already known as a warrior, was an excellent ruler, building new 
cities and repairing and re-fortifying old, encouraging tillage, stoutly 
resisting Papal interference, and governing with great advantage 
to the kingdom until his death in 12 11. Under Alfonso III. 
(1248-1279) the country attained its existing limits, and in 1254 



Portugal 3 5 1 

at a " Cortes " or Parliament summoned at Leiria, including 
representatives of the cities sitting with the nobles and higher 
clergy, the power of the Crown was well asserted against feudalism 
and the priestly class. The wise policy of Portuguese sovereigns 
was conspicuous in two points — non-interference in Spanish affairs, 
and the steady maintenance of friendship and alliance with 
England. 

Diniz (Denis), son of Alfonso III., reigned from 1279 to 1325, 
and well earned, by prudent and energetic administration, the 
honourable title of "Re Lavrador," or "the toiling king." He 
was a lover of literature ; a promoter of agriculture, commerce, and 
manufactures ; a just ruler, a maintainer of peace. To him is due 
the cultivation of vines in the north of Portugal, which still maintains 
one of the country's chief branches of trade. He steadily turned 
the attention of nobles and people from warlike pursuits to the 
tillage of the soil, and he greatly improved the royal cities of 
Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem. The administration of justice 
was thoroughly reformed, under chancellors trained in the Roman 
law at Padua and Bologna, and a new legal system was established. 
A commercial treaty with England was made, and a royal navy 
was founded under an able Genoese " High Admiral." In 1300, 
Diniz founded at Lisbon the first Portuguese university, afterwards 
transferred to Coimbra. He was the best Portuguese poet of his 
day, and may be justly regarded as the founder of Portuguese 
literature. Under his son Alfonso IV., who was much engaged 
in warfare with Spain and with the Moors, a new commercial treaty 
was concluded with Edward III. of England in 1353, and the 
powerful English king, by a proclamation, commanded his subjects 
to abstain from all harm to the Portuguese. Dom John, an 
illegitimate brother of Ferdinand I., was elected king by the Cortes 
in 1385, and a few months later a Portuguese and English army 
decisively defeated an invasion from Castile, and firmly established 
Portuguese power. In the following year the Treaty of Windsor 
cemented the bonds of friendship and alliance with England, and 
in 1387 John I. of Portugal married Philippa, a daughter of John of 
Gaunt, who came to Corunna with 2,000 English lances and 3,000 
archers, bringing the bride, and marching in triumph through 
Spanish territory, to Oporto. Under King John the power of the 
Crown was firmly maintained, and many internal reforms were made. 
A brisk trade was carried on with England by the export of fruits 
and wines in exchange for cloth made in English and Flemish 



352 A History of the World 

loom-, and the king's favourite residence was at Lisbon, where he 
could view the daily passage of shipping to and from the city which 
was now becoming a great centre of commerce. 

Above all, it was in the reign, lasting until 1433, of John " the 
Great " of Portugal, that the age of exploration and discovery began 
which gave the country her great place in European history — the age 
of Prince Henry "the Navigator," ofVasco da Gama, of Albuquerque, 
and'of Camoens, the poet who celebrated the eminent men of his 
country. The king's sons were worthy of their sire and their great 
English descent. Dom Edward, the eldest son, named after his 
great-grandfather, Edward III. of England, aided his father in the 
duties of government, and drew up the first code of Portuguese law. 
Dom Pedro, the second son, travelled over Europe, winning respect 
at all courts by his abilities, fighting against the heathen Lithuanians 
with the Teutonic Knights, and then, on his return, taking a good 
share in the direction of affairs at home. Dom Henry, the third 
son, was the famous " Navigator." His great aim was to bring 
commercial gain to Portugal by discovering a continuous sea-route 
to India. Two younger sons were distinguished, one in civil rule, 
the other as a Crusader. The beautiful Isabel, their sister, married 
Philip "the Good " of Burgundy. Under the immediate successors 
of John the Great, there was some useless and unsuccessful warfare 
against the Moors in Africa, and Dom Ferdinand, the fifth son 
of John, fell a victim to imprisonment as a hostage, rather than 
consent to the surrender of Ceuta, the only ransom which his 
captors would accept. Alfonso V., foolishly attacking Castile, 
instead of adhering to the old policy, was utterly defeated in 1476. 
His son and successor, John II. (1481-1495), a brave soldier and 
a very able politician and statesman, returned to the wise policy 
of his ancestor, John the Great, maintaining a close friendship with 
England, and neutrality in Spanish affairs. He broke the power 
of the turbulent and rapacious feudal nobles, bringing their leader, 
the duke of Braganza, to the block in 1483. He was also a 
strong supporter of the systematic maritime exploration inaugurated 
by Prince Henry, and only made the one great mistake, as regarded 
his own glory and that of Portugal, of rejecting the proposals of 
Columbus. The Portuguese king, the first European monarch who 
thought of reaching India by sailing round Africa, was deaf to one 
who thought of sailing westwards with the same object. During 
his brief reign, John II. did much to improve shipbuilding and fire- 
arms, and his court was filled with men who became illustrious in 



p 

mar 

H red in the prin 

H 

work which 

. 

rical title. He 
mathemal ;urt 

of 1> i -^ \a>t wealth in ition and an 

1 rawn 

tip and the * - improvi 

enterprising maj 

.. '1 he darn 
nun in. iv b from the fact that tiiur vo 

the open tter than half- 

men. 
In i 

• 
named from I 

I in the 
iptly 

i 
I 

that 

I 
■ 

■ 

ther 

the latter in 1431. 1 I in 



354 A History of the World 

discoverer of Brazil), made his way to Sao Miguel or St. Michael, 
which is still so famous for its oranges. In 1434 Cape Bojador 
was doubled, and in 144 1 the most enterprising of all these captains, 
Nuno Tristao, reached Cabo Branco (Cape Blanco), and unhappily 
started the Portuguese slave-trade by bringing home some captive 
negroes. Labourers were needed for the tillage of Portuguese 
waste-lands, and a profitable traffic was at once started by the 
navigators on the west African coast. In 1445 Nuno Tristao 
reached the Senegal river, and in the same year the Guinea coast 
was discovered. A further trade in slaves was started there by 
the Lisbon merchants. Year by year the voyages went on, and 
Cape Verde, so named from its green appearance, was reached in 
1446 by Diniz Diaz, one of the most adventurous commanders. 
After the death of Prince Henry in 1460, when the way round 
Africa had been well prepared, the slave-trade and other traffic on 
the Guinea coast, rich in ivory and spices, brought a lull in the 
voyages of pure exploration. In 147 1, however, the navigator 
Fernando Po discovered the island called by his name, with 
St. Thomas and Anno Bom (Annobon), and crossed the equator to 
some distance south. John II. built the fort of Elmina, now in 
British possession, west of Cape Coast Castle, on the Gold Coast, 
and in 1484 Uiogo Cam discovered the Congo. Still pushing 
forward, Bartholomew Diaz reached Algoa Bay in i486, and in 
1487 at last doubled the cape named by him, from the weather 
which he met, Cabo Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, a title changed by 
his sovereign, when the north- east run of the coast gave a good 
prospect of success in the main object which Prince Henry had 
not lived to see attained, into the world-famous Cape of Good Hope, 
in his language Cabo da Boa Esperanca. Here, on the verge of 
modern history, and in full sight of her brief period of national 
glory in the 16th century, we leave Portugal, to treat of very different 
people and scenes at the other end of southern Europe. 

Before narrating the downfall of the Greek or Byzantine Empire, 
we must deal with a branch of the Turks, the people who founded 
a new empire in the south-east of Europe. We have already seen 
something of the Mongols in this record as hordes who invaded 
eastern Europe and held sway for centuries in a large part of Russia. 
The name is derived from the word mong, meaning " brave " or 
" bold." Their origin and early history are very obscure, but from 
Chinese annals we learn of their existence, from the 6th to the 9th 
century, in regions around the north of the great desert of Gobi 



The Turks 

and 1 -ike Baikal. In th<- ntury th< 

r'alour, an<l w ientific prin< i| 

with rmed hoi one forth liki ntral 

I brought .it it and devastation ovei m it of the 

1 tcm world. In the tath century thej 

' hina, but it w.is only at the end of that period that they 

united and truly formidable under a leader oi 
nam< l the title of < Ihingu 

c.r i I Khan, ineani: ity khan or prince." In 

the i ntury this mighty i r and his 

• ■ ran northern 

pturing the populous 

rid, and Khiva, and invading northern India. 

men "t the conquered territori .ill slain, and 

fort:: fore Ins death in 1 127 

i to be n irbarian, but a general 

re i\..r to admirable dis< ij 
and the* ablest administrator . 

me ; the most terrible of warlike subduera 1 t mankind ; the 
fount • empire was, at 1 

di\i' • :his tune that 

H '•' (though, 

happ for 1 K prevented 

them .in in any p< rm.ii tern t- rr 

In this 13th century the Caliphate 

: . and a kingdom 

is Khan, 
it of Hungary in i its 

■ : on the Ith Of Mohi, I 

• i . ' vina, 

1 to 

1 with tl 

■ 

1 



2 $6 A History of the World 

military efficiency they were the best troops in the world. Among 
the Mongol kingdoms of central Asia, the khanates of Bokhara 
and Khiva reached the highest point of prosperity and power. At 
a later period the whole of their conquered territory in Asia became 
absorbed in the Chinese, British, and Russian empires, with the 
exception of Persia and a small territory to the north-east. 

It was Mongol pressure, as already seen, that forced the Turks 
westwards in Asia, and finally brought them into Europe. It is 
the Seljukian Turks whom we have hitherto seen warring with the 
Byzantine emperors in Syria and Asia Minor. We are now to see 
the Turks of the line of Othman, the Ottomans who founded the 
great empire called by their name, making the Black Sea a Turkish 
lake, and holding all the territory on the east and south, with some 
regions on the north, of the Mediterranean ; ruling at Bagdad, 
Alexandria, and Cairo, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, as well as at 
Smyrna and Constantinople. A leader of a small body of Turkish 
horse, named Ertoghrul, about the middle of the 13th century, 
rendered a great and unexpected service, by a happy charge in the 
nick of time, as a stranger both to those whom he was aiding and 
those whom he attacked, to the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium, when 
he was fighting with a Mongol army near Angora in Asia Minor. 
Ertoghrul, with but 400 mounted men, was moving from the banks 
of the Euphrates, driven off by Mongols, to Anatolia in the west of 
Asia Minor, when he came upon the armies engaged in conflict. 
Mongols he knew, too well, by sight, and he went straight at them 
with the happiest effect. In reward for this great service, Ertoghrul 
received a gift of territory in the north-west of Asia Minor, on the 
border between the Christian and Moslem dominions, and gave 
further aid to the Seljuk Sultan against both Greeks and Mongols. 
Othman, son of Ertoghrul, was born in 1258, and succeeded his 
father as head of the clan 30 years later. His authority grew, 
through the justice of his rule and successful war on neighbouring 
chiefs. Many Greek towns and fortresses were captured, and Nicaea 
and Brusa fell after long blockades. The light Turkish cavalry 
ravaged the country to the shores of the Bosphorus and the Black 
Sea, and the emperor at Constantinople, from his palace towers, could 
see the flames of burning villages. Othman died in 1326, and was 
buried at Brusa, the new capital of his growing state. His sword 
is still kept at Constantinople, and the equivalent of Christian 
coronation is the investing of a new Sultan with the weapon of 
the founder whose posterity still rule the Ottoman Empire, with a 



The Turks 357 

rity, in the same family, unexampled in 1 

:; the 

male line from I to the | Itan. 

II r, Orkhan, ruled in peace for 20 

busil) his little the nor:: 

■hil; f<>r future conquests by th ition 

:.ir military force, th< army of modern 

He independent through the death of the last 

prince of the Seljuk hue, and w;is most ablj I by his 

brother Ala-ud-din, the first Turkish " Vezir " (Vizier, I' 
Mini ' '• »r<l meaning "bearer of burd 1 man 

Turks now included men of many clans or tribes, with 1 fl 

rhe chief military 
1 of the I irps of Jania 

in," and recruited by Christian children 
trained 11 M is ulm u 

turies 1,000 Christian children were 
annually enrolled, with the addition, ft as of 

the I • themselves. These troop with bow 

rid discipline made tl 
the most fori: Every encouragement w..s held out 

elity and pn twess, not only the courtii 

■ . 
usual the r.mks of this Buperb body of sold 

: light infantry, acting .is skirmi 
• • f the J.iri; 

The ui' ! DO 

1 only live by plunder. We must now look I 

i re, while ( h*khan, with his 

• the an 

■ 

Androm, I I 

■ 

■ Mannai 1 \ and in 13 d an arn 

mplar. 1 
r, with some I 

I 

f 

I i i - in- n, the 

ntry 



358 A History of the World 

up to the gates of the capital. They then went westwards, ravaging 
Macedonia and Thessaly, and finally took possession of the " duchy 
of Athens." After this, as we have seen, Othman and his men 
became masters in the north-west of Asia Minor. Under Andro- 
nicus III. (1328-1341) nothing was done to stay coming ruin, and 
then came a long minority of his son and heir John V. (1341-1391). 
An intriguing rascal named John Cantacuzenus, chief minister of 
the late sovereign, aimed at the young emperor's throne, and he 
went a long way towards destroying the empire by calling in the 
aid of the Servians and the Turks. The former occupied Macedonia, 
Thrace, and Thessaly, and the Byzantines had no power outside 
the capital, except in districts, around Thessalonica and Adrianople. 
The Servian Empire soon afterwards broke up, and the way was 
left clear for the Turks. Turkish horsemen, brought over to. help 
Cantacuzenus, ravaged Thrace and carried thousands of captives 
away to the slave-markets of Brusa and Smyrna. The would-be 
usurper sank to the -depths of infamy by giving his daughter to 
be a denizen of Orkhan's harem, and he was at last, in 1347, ad- 
mitted as colleague and guardian of the young emperor. In 1354 
the young man took up arms, captured Cantacuzenus, shaved his 
head, and placed him in a monastery, leaving him his eyes, which 
served the recluse in the writing of a history of his own time, and 
of a highly edifying defence of Christianity. The brave Soliman, 
or Suleyman, elder son of Orkhan, gained the first foothold for the 
Ottoman Turks in Europe by seizing Gallipoli in 1355 and settling 
Turkish families there, and before his death three years later he 
fortified the shores of the Dardanelles. Orkhan's son Murad I., 
or Amurath, succeeding him in 1359, captured Adrianople in 1361 
and made it his capital, and then spent nearly 30 years in constant 
and successful warfare with the Servians and Bulgarians. Before 
the close of the 14th century the Ottoman territory in Europe 
reached the Balkans, and much was conquered in Asia Minor from 
the Seljuk Turks. The Greek emperor, John Paleologus, was 
a mere vassal of Murad, and actually aided in person at the capture 
of Philadelphia, the last Christian stronghold in Asia. 

Murad's successor Bayezid (or Bajazet), who ruled from T389 
to 1402, had won great renown by defeating, in 1394, a Christian 
host at Nicopolis, including Hungarians, Frenchmen, Germans, 
Knights of St. John, Bavarians, and Bulgarians. He was destined 
to succumb in turn to an attack of the old foes of the Turks in Asia. 
In 1402 Asia Minor was invaded by a host of Mongols under the 



D v.nt'ill of the Byzantine Empire 

famou r the I The Sultan 

len he was calk.'. this new 

■ 
in ( . i made him a captive for life. 1 . the 

nd swarmed over Asia Minor, 

te rule had been subverted by 
li [Ik- Turkish Empire • 

divided between the 

other at Adrianople. The latter yield 
Greek emperor, Manuel Pal 

in M i. with th( 

on the v. in order to have his aid against the rival Sultan 

at Nicaea, and it v foi a tune that the Greek Empire 

t be in a measure restored. On the f the rival 

an able man, Mohammed, the you: 

bad all their d in 1421, and the opportunity out 

the 'lurks from Europe had been lost while the Empei mund 

persecuting th< II sit< - in B hernia. Mohammed very shortly 

the hand <n. the ambit 

(Amurath) II. Manuel rash!. the part <>t rival 

claimants, and Murad then attacked him, n .til the pl< 

( pie. rhe i irtift ati< na r. sisted all 

. and tl. . and the 
luced the 

itinople, 1 . and 

the ! 1, and 1.: 
[] . 

i capil is half in 
had dwindled t<> 100,000 s 

III-- 1;' : the 
in the I. 

I 

: ; 

i i 

I 

end 

die galL 



360 A History of the World 

Huniades (Hunyadi Janos), which have been described, against the 
Turks, seemed likely to deprive them of the Balkan territory, but 
the Ottoman power soon revived. 

John VII. 's death in 1448, and Sultan Murad's in 145 1, bring us 
to the closing scene of more than 1,000 years of strange eventful 
history. The last Greek emperor was Constantine XI. (1448-1453) : 
his conqueror was Murad's son, Mohammed II., greatest in ability 
of all the Ottoman rulers ; a very able general, secret in counsel 
and swift to strike ; and a cruel, treacherous, and sensual tyrant. 
Constantine was a brave, pious, and generous man, but he was 
foolish enough to provoke the Sultan, who had already resolved 
on making Constantinople his capital. Mohammed at once erected 
a strong fortress near the city, on the European side, the Rumelia 
Hisar, or " Castle of Rumelia," with walls 30 feet thick, and having 
cannon throwing stone shot of six hundredweight. The Bosphorus 
was commanded by this strong work, facing the " Castle of 
Anatolia" on the Asiatic shore, and the siege began in April, 1453. 
Appeals for help had been made to the Italian naval powers and 
the Pope, but Venice and Genoa did very little, though their own 
commercial interests in the East were at stake, and Nicholas V., 
with the utmost goodwill, was unable to send more than a little 
money and a few hundred hired troops. The emperor's whole force 
for defence consisted of 3,000 mercenaries, his own little army of 
4,000, and 2,000 volunteers from the city itself, all that could be 
raised among a population who regarded him, a " Romanist " like 
his predecessor, as an apostate from the faith of his ancestors. The 
number of troops was not sufficient to man the great extent of 
land-fortification and sea-wall, and the place was assailed by several 
hundred war-galleys, and by 70,000 picked men on the land side. 
The resistance made by the emperor, and by the Genoese commander 
Giustiniani, and the men under their charge, was both skilful and 
heroic, but it was hopeless from the first. The heavy cannon of 
the Sultan breached the walls ; the Christians could make no 
adequate reply. Brave sorties were made ; mining was met by 
counter-mining ; a great Turkish wooden turret was reduced to 
ashes by the famous " Greek fire." Mohammed showed his skill 
and resolution in getting many galleys into the inner harbour above 
Galata by a novel process. These vessels, of the lighter class, were 
moved by rollers, for ten miles, under the action of sails spread to 
the wind, and of men and pulleys, along a broad well-greased 
platform of strong planks. They were thus placed, with their light 



Downfall of the Byzantine Empire 361 

draught, out of reach of the large Greek vessels guarding the 
entrance of the harbour. The most accessible part of the city was 
thus reached, and the end drew near when the cannon of the Turks 
had made several practicable breaches. On May 29th, 1453, at 
dawn of day, as Constantine and Giustiniani stood side by side in 
one of the breaches, with their best men around them, 12,000 
Janissaries, in successive columns, began the storming. Hundreds 
fell before the swords of the Greek men in armour, but Giustiniani 
was mortally wounded by an arrow, and Constantine was almost 
alone at the wall when the Turks forced their way in and trod 
him under foot. The people were in the churches at prayer when 
the Turks entered the town. The corpse of Constantine was 
found so gashed that it could only be recognised by the golden 
eagles on his shoes. The head was struck off, and sent to the 
chief cities for the populace to view. As the Ottoman Sultan rode 
through the Atmeidan (" place of horses "), or hippodrome, towards 
St. Sophia, he rose in his stirrups and struck off with a blow of his 
mace the nearest head of the three, on one neck, forming the top 
of the monument dedicated by Pausanias at Delphi in 479 B.C., 
after the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataea. The East 
was at last avenging itself on the West, the Tartar on the Aryan, in 
maiming, after the death of the last Greek emperor, the memorial of 
Western victory standing on the spot where Constantine the Great 
had placed it 11 centuries before. The fall of Constantinople, and 
the firm seating of Ottoman power in Europe, came after 53 days 
of siege. About 2,000 Christians were killed in the first heat of 
capture ; the rest of the people — male and female, senators and 
prelates, patricians and plebeians, matrons and nuns, to the number 
of 60,000— became the spoil of war, and were sold as slaves. The 
"Church" became the "Mosque" of St. Sophia, and the Moham- 
medan rites were at once inaugurated after the muezzin or crier, 
from the highest turret, had issued the public invitation to worship. 

After his conquest of the former Greek capital, Mohammed 
annexed Bosnia and Servia, but he was driven from Belgrade, as we 
have seen, by Hunyadi of Hungary, and he could make no head 
against Matthias Corvinus. In Albania the brave and renowned 
prince George, called Scanderbeg, a national hero, had taken up 
arms against the Turks in 1443. Carried away captive at seven 
years of age, he was trained as a Mohammedan, and became a 
favourite, through his valour and skill as a leader, with Murad 
(Amurath) II. He commanded a division of the Ottoman forces 



362 A History of the World 

under that Sultan, and deserted his service, with a few hundred 
Albanians, to become a Christian and the terror of his former friends. 
The Turkish garrisons were all driven out, and in 1444 the new 
leader, heading 15,000 men, almost utterly destroyed 40,000 Turks 
in the mountain-gorges. Other like successes came, and in 1449 
Amurath himself, with a vast host, lost 30,000 troops in vain attacks 
on two hill-forts held by Scanderbeg. Unaided by the Christian 
potentates, except in munitions of war, and by volunteers who 
flocked to his standard, the Albanian hero was partly deserted by 
the chiefs through jealousy of his ambitious designs, but he continued 
to defeat all Turkish efforts to reach him in his mountain-posts, and 
again and again repulsed Mohammed II., who lost tens of thousands 
of men. This tall, athletic, active, fierce, and resolute patriot, after 
25 years' incessant warfare, died in 1468, worn out by his exertions. 
He was a man of wonderful physical, mental, and spiritual gifts, 
who stemmed the tide of Moslem conquest while he lived, and 
whose value to his country and to Christendom was amply proved 
by the rapid cessation of Albanian resistance which followed his 
death. We have already seen, in the history of Venice, the warlike 
successes of Mohammed II. against the great republic. Before 
his death in 1481, the Turks were masters of most of Greece and the 
^Egean archipelago ; and of Trebizond, Sinope, ana the Crimea, on 
the Black Sea ; and were navally strong rivals of Venice and Genoa. 

Chapter IV. — Mediaeval Civilisation : Rise of Towns ; the 
Hansa League; Decay of Feudalism; Art; Invention; 
the Renaissance or Revival of Learning. 

Of the rise of towns, and the leagues or federations of cities for 
defence against tyrannical sovereigns and disorderly nobles, we 
have already seen something in the history of Germany and Italy. 
By far the most important and long-enduring of these associations 
was that known as the Hanseatic League, or Ha?zsa, an organisation 
of cities in the north of Germany and the neighbouring states for 
commercial purposes, but one which thereby attained great political 
importance. Piracy on the sea, robbery on land, illegal exactions 
from king and baron, were the foes of mediaeval commerce, and 
against all these the Hanse towns waged unrelenting war. The 
other purposes of the confederation, whose precise date and 
circumstances of origin are unknown, included the control of 
the market for goods, and the maintenance of a monopoly for 



The Hansa League 363 

its own members. The name of Hansa, meaning " a society," 
" union," first appears in 1241 ; but even so early as the reign of 
Ethelred II. in England, we find an allusion in the law-books, 
in 978, to "the peopie of the Emperor" in London, meaning the 
German merchants (called " traders of Almaine " — i.e. Allemagne, 
Germany — in a charter of Henry III.) who were doing business 
on the banks of the Thames. Traders from Cologne and other 
German towns, with special privileges, had a " factory," in the 
sense of a goods-depot in a foreign country, on the north bank 
of the Thames, a little above London Bridge, called " The Steel- 
yard," from the great balance for the weighing of goods. The 
wealth of the guild became such that Edward III. borrowed money 
from them for his French campaigns, and his crown and most 
valuable jewels were long kept in pawn at Cologne. The Baltic 
Sea was the earliest, and for ages the greatest, scene of activity for 
the merchants of the Hansa League. The mainspring of prosperity 
for traders in that region was the herring, one of the most prolific 
fish, which then frequented the Baltic shores in vast numbers. The 
" Easterlings," as the Hansa traders were called in distinction from 
merchants of southern Europe, bought from the fishermen the 
commodity which was in so great demand at a time when all 
Europe was of the Roman or of the Greek Church, both devoted 
to the strict observance of numerous fasts. The chief resorts of 
the herrings were the shores of Scania (southern Sweden), the seas 
around the isle of Riigen, and the coasts of Pomerania, and an 
early centre of Hanseatic trade was Wisby, on the north-west coast 
of the Swedish island of Gothland. From the 10th to the 14th 
centuries this place was one of the most important commercial 
cities of Europe, and its former prosperity is still attested by the 
almost intact walls and towers, and especially by the well-kept 
remains of ten churches, built in the iith and 12th centuries, of 
great interest as specimens of early Gothic architecture. Numbers 
of Roman, Byzantine, early English, and German coins are still 
found in the soil of the island. 

Wisby was the mother-city of the great Hanseatic settlement 
at Novgorod, near Lake Ilmen, in Russia, a city which, with the 
territory around it, was then an independent republic in the midst 
of various Tartar (Mongol) "khanates," or principalities. The 
place was a centre for Arctic- and Byzantine trade, and the Hansa 
merchants made their way thence by waterways as far as Smolensk, 
and farther still by the roads due to the Teutonic Knights holding 



364 A History of the World 

sway in Pomerania and Livonia. From Russia the traders exported 
wax, leather, skins, taliow, and other products, in return for the 
strong beer brewed in northern Germany, with woollen and linen 
cloth, and metal-work of various kinds. From Sweden the Hansa 
League exported copper, iron, timber, potash, pitch, tar, granite, and 
limestone. Danzig, an important town even in the 10th century, 
had a great commerce with England, whose crossbowmen received 
from Austria, by way of that Baltic port, all the yew for their bows. 
The head of the League was Liibeck, on the river Trave, 12 miles 
from the Baltic, founded by Saxons in 1143, receiving a charter 
from Henry "the Lion," duke of Saxony, and being greatly aided 
by Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. of Germany. This great 
city, having special control of Wisby in her palmy days, was at one 
time the commercial metropolis of the Baltic and northern Europe, 
wisely ruled by a council of men selected from the great mercantile 
families. There were great Hanseatic depots also at Bruges in 
Flanders and Bergen in Norway. Hamburg, founded in 808 by 
Karl the Great, became a commercial town, with privileges from 
the emperor, including a separate judicial system and exemption 
from customs-dues, towards the end of the 12th century. Fifty years 
later this city and Lubeck were the main founders of the Hanseatic 
League, and Hamburg was closely connected with Bremen, a place 
of early commercial note, and a leading Hansa city. Riga, founded 
in 1 201 by the bishop of Livonia, soon became a great place of 
trade, and a member of the League. In all, the Hansa confederation, 
at the height of its renown, included over fourscore towns, on the 
coast and inland, from Novgorod to Amsterdam and from Cologne 
to Cracow. In political affairs the Hanseatic towns usually observed 
neutrality, their chief aim being a monopoly of trade, and in 
warlike matters they acted on the defensive. Difficulties with 
princes and states were settled generally by means of shrewd 
diplomacy and by prudent gifts or tribute, but when the League 
was assailed with violent injustice, it showed that it could strike 
straight and hard. It had an early foe in Denmark, a country 
commanding the sea-passage to the Baltic by the Belt and the 
Sound, and thus capable of giving trouble to the chief Hansa trade. 
In 1227 the towns gained a victory over the Danes, on land, at 
Bornhoved, and in 1249 Lubeck, with scarcely any outside aid, 
severely defeated Eric II. at sea, and took and plundered Copen- 
hagen. Waldemar, king of Denmark, in 1361, after interfering with 
the Hansa fishing-rights off Sweden, and breaking contracts made 



The Hansa League 365 

by his predecessors and himself, committed a gross outrage in 
suddenly invading Gothland, where his forces seized and plundered 
Wisby. This stroke was too much to be borne, and the League 
at once prepared for war. An embargo was laid on all Danish 
goods in the Baltic towns ; the alliance of Sweden and Norway was 
obtained; and a fleet was made ready. In May, 1362, their ships 
appeared in the Sound, and Copenhagen was again taken and 
sacked. The rashness and negligence of the Hansa commander 
caused the loss of most of his fleet, surprised by Waldemar while 
the enemy were engaged in a land-siege. The hapless leader, after 
a year's imprisonment, was beheaded at Liibeck as a punishment 
for his error, and the cities then made a truce with the Danish king. 
Waldemar, however, again made wanton attacks on the Baltic 
commerce, and in 1367 the League strengthened its constitution, 
in a meeting of deputies held at Cologne, representing 77 towns, 
by a solemn undertaking to be common enemies of the Danish 
king, and by an Act which became the fundamental basis of union. 
Waldemar grew alarmed when he found his foes, joined by many 
princes and barons, setting up a rival monarch in Sweden, and 
threatening to dismember Denmark. In April, 1368, the Hansa 
ships were to meet in the Sound for an attack on Zealand, when 
news came that the Danish sovereign had fled, leaving a viceroy to 
do his best. The war went on for two years, during which the 
forces of the federated towns did what they pleased, amply avenging 
the ruin of Wisby by ravaging the Danish coasts, with the sacking 
of cities and the gathering of abundant spoil. At the end of that 
time, Waldemar, returning from the eastern Baltic lands, humbly 
sued for peace, and received, by the Treaty of Stralsund, in 1370, 
humiliating terms. For 15 years the League was to have two- 
thirds of the revenue of Scania, the possession of all fortresses, 
free passage of the Sound, and control over the choice of a Danish 
ruler. Waldemar died four years later, leaving the Hanseatic 
League in a position of supremacy over Scandinavia, and enjoying 
the high regard, as a northern power, of Flanders, England, and 
France. 

The decline of this great trade-confederation began with a 
change in the movements of the herring. Early in the 15th century 
the fish deserted the Baltic spawning-grounds for the German Ocean; 
the Netherlands gained what the Hansa towns of the eastern sea 
had lost ; and Amsterdam, in a large degree, took the place of 
Liibeck, which, in the 14th century, had a population approaching 



366 A History of the World 

the double of its numbers in 1S70. The wealth, pride, and power 
of these northern commercial towns of the League waned further 
after the change of commercial routes due to the discovery of 
America and of the way to India round the Cape. The Dutch 
members of the confederacy had left it early in the 15 th century, 
and the rise of British commerce in Tudor days had its influence, 
while the Reformation, changing the religion of northern Europe, 
lessened the demand for wax for candles as well as for the salt fish 
in which some of the towns still traded. Early in the 17th century 
Liibeck, Hamburg, and Bremen were the only survivors of the 
League, and these three famous "free cities," after the middle of 
the 19th century, relinquished their old privileges as free ports by 
incorporation into the German Zoll Verein, or Customs Union. 
The great commercial League, now for centuries .only a memory, 
played a noble part in its day by spreading civilisation through 
regions of Europe sunk in barbarism, and by maintaining the cause 
of right against might. It has been well said that " the free cities 
of Germany rose like happy islands amidst the wide-wasting ocean 
of violence and anarchy." They were the representatives of wealth 
won by industry, enterprise, and thrift, against warfare and spoliation 
which, left unchecked, would have caused the death of all that 
brings prosperity and happiness to human beings. The merchants 
of the towns, the great burgher-class, aided the Church in all 
righteous causes, and withstood her in the days of corruption and 
gross superstition. Their fortifications gave shelter to civil freedom 
when she had no other asylum, and the whole life of the towns 
was a perpetual paean to the glory of social order, justice, and peace. 
These organised communities, the abodes of intelligence, courage, 
and self-reliance, had a most healthy moral influence on the society 
in which they flourished, by maintaining a high standard of freedom, 
honour, domestic life, and useful activity, in an age of violence, 
religious fanaticism, intellectual darkness, and a large degree of 
civil and political slavery. The merchant was as proud of the 
town in which he was born, where he gained his wealth, and meant 
to die, as any noble was of his birth or any knight of his rank in 
chivalry, and the artisans in their guilds displayed the tools and 
emblems of their trades with as much complacency as the warrior 
showed his sword, or the highly-born pointed to his coat-of-arms. 
The glory of the Hanseatic League does not extend, like that of 
the Italian republics, to the domain of art and literature. The 
merchants aimed chiefly at money-making, on commercial principles 



Decay of Feudalism 367 

which modern views must condemn as those of a narrow and 
selfish monopoly. Their entire want of political ambition alone 
kept them from creating a powerful independent state in northern 
Germany. 

Intimately connected with the rise and progress of towns in 
mediaeval days is the decay of feudalism. According to the great 
authority Hallam, the subversion of the feudal system in Europe 
was due to the increase of the power of the Crown, the elevation 
of the lower ranks of society, and the decay of the feudal principle. 
The first of these causes has been seen operating in England, 
France, and Spain. Men recognised the king as the one lord to 
whom obedience was due in the common interest, and preferred 
the rule of one tyrant to that of many. All kings were not tyrants, 
but subject to certain of the laws which they administered, as well 
as to the public opinion which might operate through armed force. 
The feudal nobles, whose castles had been centres of violence and 
injustice, became state-officials or mere courtiers, and all society was 
better for the change. The abolition of villenage or serfdom, the 
rise to influence of artisans and merchants, and the institution of 
free cities and towns, had obvious effects which need not be further 
noted. The commons or middle class were, by their very nature, 
destructive of feudal superiority. The Church took part with the 
king, as her best supporter, rather than with the feudal nobles, and 
as the prelates and religious corporations were great landowners 
in most European countries, this desertion was a suicidal cause of 
the extinction of feudal power. The invention of gunpowder put 
the foot-soldier on more than a level with the mail-clad baron and 
knight, and reduced to nothingness, by the battering force of 
cannon, the strength of feudal fortresses. The feudal principle, 
lastly, decayed because it had lost its former vitality, the essence 
of which lay in ancient prejudice and acknowledged interest. The 
reign of law and order made the protection of a feudal lord over 
vassals needless, and the use of mercenary troops did away with 
the need for the feudal militia. Respect and attachment for the 
feudal compact died away ; " homage " and " investiture " became 
useless ceremonies, and the payment of feudal dues to the lord was 
a mere burden. The whole institution had done its work and seen 
its day, and so it perished with the change of ideas, of institutions, 
and of the forms of civilisation. 

Of the Renaissance or Revival of Learning we have already seen 
something in connection with Pope Nicholas V. We must now 



368 A History of the World 

go back and view the beginnings of this great movement. During 
the really dark ages, the Latin language, in a debased form, had 
been used for all legal instruments, and was the chief channel for 
conducting all communications on ecclesiastical and political affairs. 
From the 6th to the 1 ith centuries quotations from any classical 
Latin author are rarely found. In the T2th century these great 
writers began* to be studied afresh, and we find many references 
to Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Pliny, and other authors of ancient Rome. 
In the 14th century a zeal for the ancient learning appears, and 
a regular trade began in the copying of books, much aided by the 
introduction of good, cheap, rag-made paper in place of the costly 
parchment. Translations from classical authors made their appear- 
ance, Italy being ahead, in the revival, of the other European 
countries. Much was due there, in the 14th century, to Petrarch 
the poet and Boccaccio the prose-writer, for the preservation of the 
remains of authors by the rescue of manuscripts mouldering away 
in monastic libraries, and by the correction of errors of transcription, 
which furnished an intelligible text of the Latin classics a century 
before the invention of printing. In the 15th century Italian 
scholars gave up their lives to the work of thus reviving both Latin 
and Greek literature. 

A new intellectual life had given signs of its existence in the 
study of the Roman law. At a school of civil law at Bologna, in 
Italy, the code of Justinian was taught early in the 12th century, 
and rapid progress was made with this study at the Universities 
of Padua, Naples, and other cities. A new jurisprudence, based 
upon the Roman system, was created in the Italian municipal towns, 
and administered by the magistrates chosen by the citizens of those 
free communities. The Universities of Toulouse and Montpellier 
had many students devoted to the study of Justinian, and Roman 
law gained much influence in framing the codes used by the tribunals 
of France, Germany, and Spain. The first University which rose 
to high distinction was that of Paris, where the brilliant Abelard, 
famous for his guilty love of Heloise, was a "schoolman" or 
scholastic philosopher, noted as a poet, orator, grammarian, logician, 
mathematician, musician, and theologian, lecturing on several 
subjects, having St. Bernard among his pupils, and doing much 
to awaken mankind to regard for intellectual pursuits. The great 
English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge arose respectively 
before the Norman Conquest and in the 13th century. The 
rise of great schools of learning in Germany, at Prague and 



The Renaissance or Revival of Learning 369 

Leipzig (Leipsic), in 1350 and 1409, may be noted. In Spain 
the University of Salamanca was founded about the end of the 
1 2th century, and was famous for 300 years. New freedom of 
thought, the precursor of the Reformation, came with the new 
life of learning. The pioneers in this movement were, without 
any clear intention on their own part, the extraordinary beings 
known as " the Schoolmen " or " Scholastic Philosophers." The 
most famous of them had special names from their admirers. 
St. Anselm, whom we have seen as abbot of Bee in Normandy, 
and as archbishop of Canterbury, was a theologian aiming at a 
reasoned system of Christian truth, and is by some regarded as 
the founder of " scholasticism " or scientific theology. Lombardus, 
or Peter Lombard, a pupil of Abelard, was called the '" Master 
of Sentences " from the systematic precision of the work in "which 
he classified the opinions of the early fathers of the Church. 
Alexander de Hales, an Englishman, was styled the "Irrefragable 
Doctor " Bonaventura, a Franciscan monk of Tuscany, had, from 
his blameless life and lofty thought, the name of " Seraphic Doctor." 
The excellent Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury, who died 
of the great plague, the "Black Death," in 1349, a few weeks 
after his consecration, was known as the "Profound Doctor." 
Thomas Aquinas was the "Angelic Doctor," and the "Angel 
of the Schools," and the " Eagle of Divines." Duns Scotus was 
the " Subtle Doctor." His pupil, William Occam (or Ockham), 
a Franciscan monk, born at Ockham in Surrey, an eminent logician 
and disputant, was the " Invincible Doctor," and won honour 
as a defender of liberty of thought and opinion in the 14th 
century. These worthy men aimed at reducing the doctrines 
of the Church to a scientific system, and their efforts to reconcile 
the dogmas of Christianity with the conclusions of human reason 
led them into metaphysical discussions so intricate and subtle, 
so abstruse, and so bewildering to ordinary minds, that some of 
them have been accused, in burlesque, of trying to settle how 
many angels could dance at once on the point of a needle. 
Peace be to their souls ! they did much to expose supersti- 
tion in its native absurdity, and to prepare the way for better 
things. 

An analytical, sceptical, secular spirit, the exact opposite of 
mediaeval mysticism, was the outcome of the classical revival. 
Less and less regard was paid to the worship and doctrines of the 
Church. In the love of art and literature, ideas arose very diverse 



370 A History of the World 

from those of Crusaders and ascetics, and indifference to all that 
was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of monkery or 
feudalism, was accompanied by enthusiasm for things new, fresh, 
graceful, and clearly apprehended by the senses and the mind. The 
full outburst of the new light for the intellect of man came early in 
the 1 6th century, when a new geographical world, with all its 
wonders, was revealed, and the students of the glorious literature 
of Athens were enabled, for the first time, to read in the original 
Greek, with a text freed from most of its errors and corruptions, 
the Gospels and Epistles of the human founders of the Christian 
religion. The Greek language had, during many centuries, been 
almost orgotten in western Europe. A few of the " Schoolmen " 
knew a little Greek, but even in Italy the language was almost 
unknown, and scarcely any quotation from a Greek poet can be 
found in writers from the 6th to the 14th centuries. Petrarch and 
Boccaccio were the first restorers of this branch of classical learning, 
the former being a student of Plato under a scholar from Con- 
stantinople, and the latter causing lectures on Homer to be delivered 
in Florence. Towards the end of the 14th century Greek literature 
was taught in the great Tuscan city, and at Pavia, Rome, and 
Venice, by Manuel Chrysoloras, a scholar from Constantinople, who 
trained a number of pupils that acquired eminence in the Greek 
language ; Poggio Bracciolini, a native of Florence, a man who spent 
50 years in the reviving of classical learning, searching convents for 
manuscripts, and travelling to England and over much of Europe ; 
Guarinus of Verona, Leonardo Bruno, and others. Many Italian 
scholars went eastwards, and carried home hundreds of Greek 
manuscripts, and the Turkish attack on Constantinople brought 
a general revival in the dispersal of men skilled in the ancient 
tongue. In the 15th century Johannes Bessarion, a native of 
Trebizond who became bishop of Nicaea and a cardinal in the 
Roman Church, did great things for Greek literature and philosophy, 
and on his death he left his valuable collection of 600 Greek MSS. 
to St. Mark's Library at Venice. Theodore Gaza is another eminent 
man in the same line, who taught Greek at Ferrara, was befriended 
by Bessarion, and published a Greek grammar. Constantine 
Lascaris, one of the refugees from Constantinople, laboured under 
Bessarion's patronage at Rome, Naples, and Messina. His relative 
John Lascaris, who also took flight from Constantinople to Italy, 
was employed by Lorenzo de Medici of Florence to collect the 
works of great Greek authors, and afterwards taught the language at 



The Renaissance or Revival of Learning 371 

Paris, and became at Rome, under Leo X., superintendent of his 
Greek press and of a school for young Greeks. 

These were days when to be a Greek scholar was the road to 
high honour as the guest and friend of princes, and the holder 
of good positions in the Church. In order to complete this 
interesting and important subject we pass into the 16th century, 
and note the progress made in our own country. The study of 
Greek was first introduced into England at the University of Oxford 
by two distinguished scholars : William Grocyn, a pupil of William 
of Wykeham's great school at Winchester, who had learnt the 
language in Italy; and Thomas Linacre, the famous physician, an 
Oxford student who became a Fellow of All Souls in 1484. As 
a diplomatist under Henry VII. he was at Bologna, Florence, 
and Padua. In the Tuscan city he learned Greek, and on his 
return became tutor to Arthur, Prince of Wales, afterwards lecturing 
at Oxford. This founder and first president of the College of 
Physicians was probably the first English doctor of medicine 
who read Aristotle and Galen in the original Greek, and his 
Latin translation of the works of the Greek physician won high 
praise from Erasmus. Archbishop Morton, the trusted friend and 
minister of Henry VII., was one of the great promoters of the new 
learning, freely using his wealth in the cause, and being one of the 
first to discover the wonderful abilities of Thomas More, whom he 
sent to Oxford to study Greek under Grocyn and Linacre. John 
Colet, dean of St. Paul's, and founder of St. Paul's School in 
London, a friend of the illustrious Erasmus, lectured at Oxford on' 
St. Paul's Epistles, valuing Greek chiefly, not because it laid open 
to him the beauties of Homer and Sophocles, or the philosophy 
of Plato and Aristotle, but because he could read his Greek 
Testament. The faith and the moral code of Christianity were 
there found in their original form, free from the mystical glosses 
of mediaeval theologians. The printing-press was by this time 
spreading copies of the classical authors over western Europe, and 
the minds of men, inspired by contact with the best intellectual 
work of ancient Greece and Rome, attacked every department of 
knowledge with new vigour. The perfect classical models of style 
showed the vast importance of literary form, and the free energy 
of the Greek mind gave the impulse to inquiry which led to the 
grand discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo in the world of science. 
The devotees of Greek learning were styled the Humanists, as the 
ancient classics were called literae humaniores ("the more polite 



372 A History of the World 

or refined literature ") and the Humanities, in opposition to science 
and philosophy. The effect of the new learning upon religious, 
or superstitious, belief was such as patrons of letters like Nicholas V. 
had never contemplated. In Macaulay's words, " Ignorance was 
the talisman on which their power depended, and that talisman 
they had themselves broken. They had called in Knowledge as a 
handmaid to decorate Superstition, and their error produced its 
natural effect. Minds that were daily nourished with the best 
literature of Greece and Rome grew too strong to be trammelled by 
the cobwebs of the scholastic divinity." The classical scholars led 
the van of the grand assault on spiritual tyranny. Every one of the 
chief reformers was a Humanist, and in northern Europe almost 
every distinguished Humanist, according to the measure of his 
courage and integrity, was a reformer. In Scotland John Knox, 
George Buchanan, the noble-minded Maitland of Lethington, and 
Andrew Melville, principal of Glasgow College, were on the same 
side in religion as many of the most learned " Grecians " in England. 
On the Continent John Reuchlin, a good scholar both in Greek 
' and Hebrew, a brave opponent of persecutors of the Jews ; and 
Erasmus, one of the greatest men in literature, the pupil in Greek 
of Linacre, the dear friend of Colet and Sir Thomas More, a 
professor of Greek at Cambridge, the lifelong foe of monkery, the 
first editor of a sound text of the New Testament in Greek, the 
greatest champion of the Revival of Learning, — these eminent 
men, not openly quarrelling with the established Church-authorities, 
undermined the position of the Roman See with men of culture 
by the expression of free thought. 

We must now give a brief glance at other sides of mediaeval 
progress in civilisation. In domestic architecture we observe the 
transition from the use of wood to stone and brick, and from the 
massive baronial strongholds, with mere loopholes for windows on 
the outer side, to such castle-palaces as Kenilworth and Warwick, 
Alnwick, Arundel, and Windsor, and beautiful castellated houses 
like Hadclon Hall. Chimneys and glass windows, both unknown 
to ancient Greece and Rome, were vast improvements. It is in 
Italy that we must chiefly look for high pictorial art during this 
period. Great Tuscan painters from the 13th to the 15th centuries 
were Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, 
Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, and, partly in the 16th century, the wonderful 
genius Leonardo da Vinci, at once a painter, architect, sculptor, 
engineer, scientific inventor, mathematician, natural philosopher, 



The Renaissance or Revival of Learning 373 

and accomplished gentleman. His lofty place as an artist is based 
upon the keen and earnest study of nature ; drawing unsurpassed 
for delicacy ; a noble style, and masterly skill in subtle expression, 
light and shade, modelling and perspective. Venice produced the 
brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, the latter of whom taught 
Sebastiano del Piombo, the great Giorgione, and the greater 
Titian. 

Italy had, since the fall of the Western Empire, kept traces 
of the ancient civilisation in a far greater degree than any other 
country in western Europe, and the dawn of the new light was 
seen there long before it appeared in France, Germany, or the 
British Isles. The cities, as we have seen, held their own against 
feudal nobles, and enjoyed a large share of republican independence. 
With this municipal freedom were associated commerce, taste, 
comfort, and even luxury of life. Wealth, dominion, and knowledge, 
in the days of the Crusades, came to the commonwealths of the 
Adriatic and Tuscan seas. Italian ships were in every port of 
the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, of the Bay Of Biscay and 
of the Channel. Italian "factories," or commercial depots, arose 
on every shore. Italian money-changers did their business in every 
thriving town. Manufactures flourished, and banking was established 
for the convenience of trade. In the 14th century some parts of 
the fair southern peninsula had reached a very high point of 
prosperity and civilisation. In the earlier part of that century 
the annual revenue of Florence exceeded in value that which 
England and Ireland yielded to Queen Elizabeth at the close 
of the Tudor age, when the 17th century began. There were 200 
factories and 30,000 workmen engaged in the woollen manufacture. 
There .was a large coinage of gold and silver, and 80 banks con- 
ducted the commercial business, not merely of the Tuscan city, 
but of all Europe. The city contained 170,000 people, with schools 
in which 10,000 children were taught to read, 1,200 studied 
arithmetic, and 600 received a learned education. Literature and 
the fine arts were making progress proportionate to that of material 
prosperity. A new language, the Italian based upon the old 
tongue of Rome, rapidly gained the perfection of sweetness and 
vigour. The Divina Commedia of Dante, the greatest work of 
imagination which had appeared since the Homeric poems, 
splendidly displayed the power of the language and the poetical 
genius of the author who wielded it. Petrarch and Boccaccio, as 
we have seen, introduced a more profound, liberal, and elegant 
25 



374 A History of the World 

scholarship, and aroused enthusiasm for the long- forgotten literature 
of Greece and Rome. The spectacle presented by Italy at this 
period is in striking contrast to that afforded by England and 
France, where illiterate masters still oppressed a degraded peasantry. 
In the north of Europe ignorance and semi-barbarism still largely 
prevailed, while the south showed opulent and enlightened states, 
large and splendid cities; " ports, arsenals, villas, museums, libraries, 
marts filled with every article of comfort and luxury, factories 
swarming with artisans, the Apennines richly tilled to their summits, 
the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of Venice, 
and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to 
the palaces of Milan." It will be our grievous task shortly to tell 
how, in the Italian states, precocious maturity paid a penalty in 
untimely decay, and how the pleasant land of wit and learning, of 
literary and artistic genius, of wealth and luxury, became a prey 
to ambitious men who brought upon her people a time of slaughter, 
famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, and despair. 

In literature, the greatest Italians of the period have been already 
given. In England, our first great poet, Chaucer, was contemporary 
with our first great prose-writer, Wyclif, both flourishing somewhat 
later than Petrarch and Boccaccio. In French, Villehardouin, very 
early in the 13th century, wrote the Conquete de Constantinople (the 
Latin conquest) in admirable style — vigorous, graphic, and direct. 
Froissart, in the 15th, and Philippe de Comines, were reflective and 
picturesque historians, while Charles d'Orleans and Villon were the 
chief lyric poets. The German Nibelungen Lied has been already 
noticed. In the 14th and 15th centuries the national Teutonic 
literature was chiefly in the hands of the Meistersiinger, or artisan- 
poets, and we may also note the Volkslieder, or national ballads, and 
the satirist Sebastian Brandt, who deals with the follies and vices 
of his day in the Ship of Fools, published in 1494. 

Mediaeval times have transmitted to the moderns one glory, at 
least, in which they can never be surpassed — their, noble and stately, 
or graceful and beautiful, architectural models. In was in the 12th 
and following centuries that there arose in France and England, 
Belgium and Holland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, the cathedrals 
and abbeys which display so much varied excellence of general 
composition, along with all the beauties attached to intricacy of 
parts, elegance of form, and skilful use of light and shade. The 
rounded arch of the severe and massive Norman style gave way to 
the pointed arch of the Gothic, a style of building which soon 



Invention 375 

displayed the profusion of ornament seen in the cathedrals of 
Amiens and other French towns. The cathedrals of Milan and 
Cologne, the latter of which has been only recently completed, 
belong to the 15th century. The Milan work is a wonder, a dream 
in white marble, bristling with pinnacles and statues, and without 
a rival in its own way. Some of the Flemish Hotels de Ville, or 
Town Halls, are exquisite in design and ornamentation. In Italy, 
the Tuscan Romanesque style is seen in the cathedral of Pisa, 
begun in the nth century, being a basilica with round arches and 
colonnades of pillars. The Italian Gothic is displayed in the 
cathedrals of Siena, Bologna, and Florence. At Venice, architecture 
passed from the Byzantine style, in the 13th century, into that of 
the pointed arch, and a special kind of Gothic arose. The beautiful 
palaces along the Grand Canal have details of both styles. 

Our last topics in dealing with mediaeval history are the 
mariner's compass and the art of printing. The use of the magnetic 
needle, which appears to have been known in Asia at a remote 
period, is believed to have been known in Europe, in the form of 
the compass, in the 12th century, by independent discovery, and 
not by importation from China, and it may have been used in 
western Europe in the 14th century. It is needless to point out 
the connection between its adaptation as a steering-guide and the 
progress of geographical discovery in great oceans. Printing, in 
some forms, was known in China many centuries, and in Europe for 
some ages, before the invention of the movable metal types which 
gave the art its wide practical value. A controversy of the utmost 
bitterness has gone on for over four centuries concerning the inven- 
tion of such printing in Europe. Into this matter it would be 
profitless to enter, and no certainty can be attained. We can only 
safely affirm that the art began to be practised, about the middle of 
the 15th century, in Germany or Holland, and that it spread with 
such rapidity that before 1500 there were nearly a score of master- 
printers in Strasburg, over 20 at Cologne, 17 at Nuremberg, 20 at 
Augsburg. When the 16th century opened there were printing- 
houses at over 80 places in northern Europe, over 60 in France 
and Italy, and above 20 in Spain and Portugal. Caxton brought 
the art to London in 1476 or 1477, and the powerful instrument for 
the spread of ideas was soon actively at work at Oxford, Cambridge, 
and other centres. An intellectual revolution came with the 
cheapening of books, the increased supply creating its own demand, 
and the pulpit becoming comparatively powerless in presence of the 



376 A History of the World 

printing-press. The ecclesiastics could not hinder the dissemination 
of what orthodoxy held to be poison, and the transient impression 
produced by oral eloquence was as nothing against the abiding 
power of printed matter which could be leisurely read and carefully 
digested. Printing brought reading, and reading brought the 
Reformation which transformed Europe, and, through Europe, the 
whole course of modern history. 



Section III. MODERN HISTORY. 

(a.d. i 492- 1 898.) 



BOOK I. 

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO THE 
PEACE OF WESTPHALIA (1492- 1648). 

Chapter I. — Discovery of America; Conquest of Mexico; 
Conquest of Peru ; the Cape Route to India. 

The geographical enterprise displayed in the 15th century had 
a glorious and, in the history of the world, a most momentous 
culmination in the opening of a fresh route to the East, and in 
the re-lifting of the veil which had so long shrouded the regions 
of the West. The remembrance of the transient settlements made 
by Norse adventurers in North America had passed away during 
the 14th century, and it was without design or any preconception 
of a possible new continent that the grand discovery was made at 
the close of the 15th. Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa, 
in the plebeian class, probably about 1440. This ingenious and 
enterprising man, a sailor from his early youth, had received some 
education at the University of Pavia. In or about the year 1470, 
being wrecked in a sea-fight off Cape St. Vincent, he reached the 
coast of Portugal floating on a plank, and soon afterwards married, 
at Lisbon, the daughter of an Italian navigator who had been 
governor of Porto Santo, an island of the Madeira group. There 
the Genoese mariner lived for some time, making charts for the 
support of his family, and studying maps and other documents 
left by his father-in-law, Perestrello. Convinced of the spherical 
shape of the earth, he came, as early as 1474, to conceive the plan 

377 



378 A History of the World 

of reaching the East by a westward voyage. His estimate of the 
circumference of the globe was too short by one-sixth, and his 
conception of the extent of Asia from west to east was far too long, 
so that he believed Zipangu (Japan) to be in about the position 
of the Sandwich Islands. His project of a westerly sea-route to t 
eastern Asia was partly based upon a desire to revive the trade 
of his native city, whose land-traffic with India by way of the 
Crimea and the Caspian Sea had suffered greatly from the Tartars 
and Turks. He was also influenced by the Portuguese attempts 
to make voyages to the East by way of the newly found Cape of 
Good Hope. After his vain attempts, for many years, in various 
quarters — including King John II. of Portugal and two Spanish 
grandees— to obtain the patronage needful to supply funds for his 
undertaking, the cause of Columbus was at last supported by 
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and on August 3rd, 1492, he 
sailed from the little port of Palos, in the south-west of Spain, in 
charge of the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, three small 
craft called caravels, carrying in all but 120 men. Leaving the 
Canary Islands on September 6th, after taking in fresh water, he 
sailed out boldly westward into an ocean never before navigated. 
The romantic incidents of this memorable voyage are well known — 
the despairing and then mutinous spirit of the men, the sudden 
variation of the magnetic needle, the sea-birds met flying from 
the west, the carved staff and the branch with fresh berries borne 
eastwards by the current, the flickering light seen ahead. At two 
o'clock on the morning of October 12th, a cannon-shot from the 
Pinta announced the sight of land, and the ships were soon 
anchored off one of the Bahama group, be it San Salvador, Watling's 
Island, or another. 

Columbus went to the grave in the full belief that the land 
which he had discovered was part of eastern Asia, the whole of 
which region was then called " India," and hence came the mistaken 
names of Indians applied to the natives of America, and of West 
Indies to the archipelago first visited by the great Genoese. Re- 
ceiving the homage both of the wondering natives and of his 
repentant crews on landing, Columbus, as admiral and viceroy by 
the appointment of the Spanish sovereigns, planted the royal 
standard and in their name took possession of the country. On 
October 28th the expedition reached Cuba, and on December 6th 
arrived at Haiti, called Espanola (Hispaniola or "Little Spain") 
by its discoverer. There he left a small Spanish colony, composed 



Discovery of America 379 

of some 40 volunteers, with a wooden fort made from the timbers 
of his flag-ship, the Santa Maria, driven ashore and broken up 
by a gale. On January 4th, 1493, he started for Spain with the 
two smaller vessels, himself on board the Nina. The Pinta parted 
company during the very stormy voyage, but arrived at Palos on 
the same day, March 15th, as Columbus had entered the port amid 
the shouts of the people, the roaring of cannon, and the ringing 
of bells. The voyagers had brought back, as proofs of their success, 
six natives of the West Indies, some gold, and various animals, 
birds, and plants. The discoverer of America was received with 
the highest honour at the court, then at Barcelona. In subsequent 
voyages in 1493 and 1498 Columbus made his way to several West 
India islands, including Dominica, Jamaica, and Trinidad, and 
crowned his career as a discoverer by first visiting the continent 
of South America, at the mouth of the Orinoco. Such was the 
discovery of America, the vast continent named, not from the 
illustrious man who first made it permanently known to the rest 
of the world, but from the distinguished Florentine navigator and 
chart-maker, Amerigo Vespucci, a man on friendly terms with 
Columbus, and in no wise responsible for the injustice due to a 
German geographer who, in 1507, used the term Americi Terra, 
adopted by other writers as America. The first dated map bearing 
this name was published in 1520, but the name did not come into 
general use until the close of the 16th century. 

We need only note further, in the way of geographical discovery 
and navigation at this period, that in 1497 the Venetians John 
and Sebastian Cabot rediscovered the mainland of North America 
after a voyage from Bristol ; that Pinzon or Pincon, a comrade of 
Columbus, discovered Brazil, at the Amazon, early in 1500; that 
in the same year Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, made his way 
to Newfoundland and the mouth of the St. Lawrence ; that in 
15 1 2 Florida was discovered by Ponce de Leon, Spanish governor 
of Porto Rico ; that in the following year Nunez de Balboa, a 
Spanish landowner in San Domingo (Haiti), crossed the isthmus 
of Darien, and first of Europeans gazed on the vast expanse of the 
Pacific; that in 15 16 Diaz de Solis, a Spanish comrade of Pinzon, 
discovered the great Rio de la Plata, and was killed on its banks 
by ambushed natives; that in 1520 an expedition under the 
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magalhaes or Magalhaens (Magellan) 
first sailed into the Pacific, so named by him from the calm weather 
which he met with, through the strait bearing his name ; and that 



380 A History of the World 

his flag-ship, the Victoria, commanded by his lieutenant Sebastian 
del Cano after the leader's death by violence in the Philippine Isles, 
was the first vessel that ever sailed round the world, completing 
the return voyage to Spain in September, 1522, and establishing 
the fact of the spherical shape of our planet by evidence which no 
" theology " could refute. 

European conquest in the New World quickly followed the 
discoveries made under the auspices of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
and the occupation of San Domingo and Cuba led directly, under 
their grandson and Ferdinand's successor, Charles V., to the 
subjugation of Mexico, discovered in 15 18 by Juan de Grijalva, 
a relative of Velasquez, governor of Cuba. His account of " New 
Spain " was so glowing that an armament composed of about 
600 Spanish infantry, 200 or 300 Indians, a few cavalry, and 
14 cannon, was at once fitted out and placed under the command 
of Hernando Cortes, alcalde or chief magistrate of Santiago, the 
capital of Cuba. This hero of romantic history, a commander 
and statesman of rare ability and courage, was born in 1485, at 
Medellin, in Estremadura, of a noble but decayed family. His 
character and achievements are fully described in the brilliant 
pages of Prescott. The power, resources, and civilisation of the 
country which he conquered have been greatly overdrawn by 
Spanish writers in order to exalt the glory of their country, but 
the undoubted facts display in Cortes a marvellous combination 
of astuteness and daring. Of Mexican history prior to the Spanish 
invasion we know little that is trustworthy, owing to the barbarous 
destruction of the native records by the Spaniards. Before the 
10th century a people named the Toltecs came down from the 
north and made their capital at Tula, about 50 miles north of 
the Mexican valley. They were a tall, robust, well-formed, sallow 
race, of mild and peaceful character, industrious and enterprising, 
tillers of the soil for products including maize and cotton, and 
introducers of a civilisation which comprised the erection of cities 
and temples and colossal monuments showing architectural skill, 
the fusing of metals, the making of pottery, and artistic weaving. 
Their religion was a nature-worship, with offerings of fruits, flowers, 
and small animals. In the 13th century, when the Toltecs, greatly 
diminished in numbers by pestilence and famine, had migrated 
to the south, the Aztecs or Mexicans, also coming from the north, 
appeared upon the scene, and gained by degrees a mastery among 
the tribes. This fierce race founded a chief city called Tenochtillan, 



Conquest of Mexico 381 

or Mexico, from their god Mexitli, and extended their empire from 
the shores of the Gulf to the Pacific in the course of the 15th 
century. The capital stood in the midst of a great lake, on islands 
united by embankments of earth and stone. The government 
was that of an elective empire, the deceased ruler being succeeded 
by some warlike relative, or a great noble, wielding a despotic 
power with the limitations of a feudal system. The popular 
religion was a polytheism, with a Mars or god of war as the 
chief deity, to whom were annually offered, with horrible savagery 
of detail, many thousands of human sacrifices, men, women, and 
children taken in war or exacted as tribute. In strange contrast, 
other rites showed offerings of fruits, flowers, and perfumes, with 
joyful accompaniments of dancing and song. The priestly class 
were very numerous and influential, instructing the young of 
both sexes in reading, writing, arithmetic, and choral singing, and 
in the elements of astrology and astronomy. The Mexican territory, 
in the geographical sense, also included a small independent 
republic whose fertile valleys, called Tlaxcalla, or " the land of 
bread," were inhabited by a bold, athletic people, destined to assume 
great importance in the story of Cortes. 

The expedition prepared by Velasquez set sail from Cuba in 
November, 15 18, and Cortes and his comrades, landing first in 
Yucatan, marched northwards for Mexico, and first encountered 
the natives at the Tabasco River. Great terror was caused by the 
Spanish firearms, and especially by the horses — strange creatures 
which were thought to be of one piece with their riders. An utter 
rout ensued, after some brave resistance, and at the end of March, 
15 19, swift messengers reached Montezuma, the Mexican ruler, with 
the terrible tidings of the new-comers, and their marvellous engines 
of war. Envoys and presents were sent and received, but there 
soon came an order to quit the country, a message which reached 
Cortes on the coast at the site of Vera Cruz, already selected for 
the city which he founded. The Spanish invader, hearing of the 
Tlaxcallans as hostile to the Mexicans, set out for their country in 
August, after taking the decisive step of beaching most of his ships 
and cutting off the means of speedy flight. His enterprise was 
much aided by a beautiful Aztec maiden of high birth, who had 
become a slave amongst the Tabascans, and, learning their dialect, 
wholly different from the Aztec, could interpret for Cortes through 
Aguilar, a Spaniard who had acquired Tabascan during a captivity 
of seven years prior to his rescue at the invasion. Converted and 



382 A History of the World 

baptised as Donna Marina, the graceful and intelligent girl became 
deeply devoted to the commander, quickly gaining Spanish enough 
to interpret directly from and into Aztec, and rendering great service 
by her vigilance, courage, endurance, and knowledge of the native 
character. In September, 15 19, a hot fight of some hours with the 
Tlaxcallans, ending in a Spanish victory, turned them into willing 
vassals of the crown of Castile, and allies whose fidelity was proof 
against disaster to the invaders which might have ended in utter 
ruin. During the march on Mexico, Marina discovered a plan for 
the destruction of the Spanish army, and Cortes took signal ven- 
geance on the plotters of the ambuscade ordered by Montezuma. 
The sides of the stately snow-capped Orizaba mountain, over 
17,000 feet above sea-level, had been scaled as far as the rugged 
plateau Anahuac, the Mexican tableland, from 4,000 to 8,000 feet 
in height, which stretches almost from sea to sea, and whence rise 
the great volcanic ridges. In this temperate region, with a dry 
season from November to May, and a most pleasant time, with 
rains at evening and during the night, from June to October, the 
roses bloom throughout the year, and the scenery includes broad, 
richly verdant plains; lakes as lovely as Como and Garda; peaks 
of everlasting snow, clothed lower down with oak and pine ; brawling 
streams, and wild ravines. With some thousands of Tlaxcallans 
in his train, Cortes reached the city of Mexico on November 8th, 
and was received courteously by Montezuma and his retinue, though 
the streets were left empty by the royal command, and the silence 
of death reigned as the foreign intruders marched to the quarters 
provided for them. 

The Mexican sovereign, a grave, calm, silent, good-looking man 
of about 50 years of age, with a generally sad expression of features, 
was the victim of superstitious fears concerning the new-comers. 
He had good reason to dread the man whose audacious plan against 
his person was formed within a week of arrival in the city. Cortes, 
in his sincere religious zeal, first perplexed Montezuma by appeals, 
through Marina, concerning his adoption of the Catholic faith, and 
then, during an interview at the palace, appalled him by the 
suggestion that he should transfer his residence to the Spanish 
quarters. After a refusal, the hapless monarch weakly yielded to 
the persuasive powers of Marina, and thus became a hostage in the 
hands of his foe. At this moment, Cortes was summoned to Vera 
Cruz by tidings that Narvaez, dispatched by the governor of Cuba, 
had arrived with a large force to supersede him in the command. 



Conquest of Mexico 383 

With prompt decision he attacked the new-comer in a night-surprise, 
and persuaded the troops, 800 in number, to join his own forces. 
On returning to Mexico in June, 1520, he found the city in 
insurrection against the Spaniards, a movement due to the severities 
of his brave and reckless lieutenant, Alvarado. The troops were 
beleaguered in their quarters, and fierce fighting occurred in sorties 
which daily diminished Cortes' scanty numbers. When Montezuma 
appeared on the roof of the building to address the multitude in 
behalf of the Spaniards, he was met with a shower of stones and 
arrows, and received a fatal wound. He died on the last day of 
June, and on July 1st, in face of the enraged populace, the Spanish 
leader started at midnight, on his retreat for his base of operations 
in the Tlaxcallan territory. The lake was covered with canoes full 
of armed men, and terrible losses were incurred during the march 
along one of the great causeways. Numbers of men were drowned 
at the broken bridgeways, and over 400 Spaniards, about 50 horses, 
the cannon and treasure, 4,000 native allies, and most of the 
Mexican prisoners, were killed, captured, or rescued. Despairing 
for the time, Cortes, on reaching a secluded spot outside the city, 
flung himself down under a cypress still preserved at Popotla, a 
suburb of modern Mexico, and gloomily reviewed his position. At 
dawn he mounted his horse, collected stragglers, and found that he 
still had his gallant Alvarado and his trusty Marina. 

The Aztecs, believing the enemy to be utterly destroyed, restored 
their fallen gods and temples, prepared for the renewal of the 
hideous human sacrifices, and chose Montezuma's brother as their 
ruler. In a few days he died of small-pox, a new disease in Mexico, 
brought up from the coast by a negro, one of the soldiers of 
Narvaez' command. The last monarch of Mexico, chosen from a 
neighbouring state, gathered his warriors on hearing that Cortes 
and a few Spaniards had survived, and marched to attack him in 
the mountains, where he had been joined by some Tlaxcallans. The 
mounted Spaniards dashed into the midst of their enemy, and a 
desperate fight ended in a panic among the Mexicans, due to the 
lucky wounding of the monarch and the capture of his banner by a 
Spanish lancer. This great victory of Otumba, gained on July 8th, 
was the turning-point of the struggle. Cortes, well received by the 
Tlaxcallans, made fresh preparations for conquest, and in December 
he headed a large force, mainly composed of native allies, but 
including 550 Spanish infantry, and 40 horsemen, with a few 
cannon. On his second march to Mexico, he took with him, in 



384 A History of the World 

pieces, 13 brigantines made in Tlaxcalla, and these, with a fleet of 
native canoes, were launched upon the lake in May, 152 1, for the 
siege of the city. The artillery slew thousands of the Aztecs during 
the 80 days' operations, and the brigantines were used with great 
effect against the hostile canoes. The city had been almost ruined 
by the artillery and by conflagrations caused by Cortes' allies, and 
in August the Mexican king surrendered himself to the conqueror. 
50,000 of the inhabitants had perished by pestilence and famine 
alone. The desperate resistance made foreshadowed the obstinacy 
and valour displayed by the Spaniards nearly three centuries later 
at Saragossa. 

Cortes placed the country under military rule, retaining the chiefs 
in some show of authority, and rewarding his men with encomiendas, 
or grants of Indian labourers to aid them in colonisation. In 1522 
he was appointed by Charles V. to be governor and captain-general 
of New Spain, and, receiving reinforcements, he greatly extended 
the dominion in the course of a few years, and made discovery 
of California in 1526, during a voyage of research for a western 
or north-western passage to Asia. His subsequent career does 
not concern this narrative. The Aztec population, Christianised 
by their conquerors, suffered at times much cruel treatment from 
tyrannical governors and greedy adventurers from Spain, who sought 
riches in the slave-traffic, and disregarded the official instructions 
to deal kindly with the Indians. The country was well governed 
by Mendoza, the first viceroy, who, arriving in 1535, encouraged 
the native tillage, and strove to develop the growth and manufacture 
of wool by bringing sheep of the fine Merino breed from his native 
land. He founded the city of Guadalajara, now one of the largest 
and most flourishing places in Mexico, and also Valladolid, named 
after his own birthplace in Spain. The Mexican town had its name 
changed, early in the 19th century, to Morel ia, in honour of Morelos, 
a brave and able fighter for colonial independence. The religious 
orders, Franciscan and others, with the Inquisition, were established 
in the country in due course, and to the former were due the spread 
of education and the firm basis of Spanish government. The 
resources of the great colony were crippled by the exclusive com- 
mercial system which forbade all trade with any other country than 
Spain, and Mexico was, for nearly three centuries, treated simply 
as a mine to be worked by the labour of its people for the benefit 
of the conquerors. In population and material wealth it ranked 
first among the Spanish colonies, and the coinage-records, dating 



Conquest of Peru 385 

from 1537, show a production of gold, in three centuries and a half, 
to the value of over 20 millions sterling, and of silver to above 30 
times that amount, or 620 millions sterling. 

The conquest of Peru was the work of a wholly uneducated 
soldier of great courage, resolution, and resource, Francisco Pizarro, 
born towards the end of the 15 th century at Trujillo in Estremadura. 
In 1509 he was on an expedition in Darien, and stood by the side 
of Balboa when he discovered the Pacific. It was when he was 
residing at Panama about 1525 that his attention was drawn to the 
empire of the Incas, the aboriginal Indians of Peru, and that, under 
the auspices of the Spanish governor, he made some preliminary 
researches by sea along the coast to the south of the isthmus. The 
Peruvian people had reached a fair stage of civilisation, having 
domesticated the llamas, animals of the camel family, as beasts of 
burden, and the alpacas, with their long fine silky wool ; cultivating 
maize and a food-plant called quinoa, with potatoes and other edible 
roots ; and possessing skill as miners, metal-workers, masons, potters, 
and weavers. In literary work the Incas had drama and song, and 
their solid and extensive empire, with a highly centralised and 
socialistic system of government, was built up by superior military 
skill and valour. In 1530 a war of succession was raging between 
two sons of a deceased monarch, and this terminated early in 1532 
in favour of the one named Atahualpa. At this time Pizarro, under 
a commission from the Spanish home-government, landed at Tumbez 
with a little force of under 200 men and 40 horses. The subjugation 
of the country was an easy task. Marching inland in May, 1532, 
Pizarro, at the close of the year, captured Atahualpa by treachery, 
extorted an enormous ransom, and then, with shameful cruelty and 
bad faith, put him to death in August, 1533. The capital, Cuzco, 
was entered, and a new sovereign set up as nominal ruler. In 
January, 1535, the conqueror, created a marquis by Charles V., 
founded Lima as the capital of his new government, and began to 
administer affairs with ability and foresight, sending out expeditions 
for discovery and conquest, and consolidating Spanish power. In 
1536 a wide-spread insurrection of the natives placed the Spaniards 
in great danger, Cuzco and Lima being beleaguered, and Juan 
Pizarro, the conqueror's brother, killed in- action. In the spring 
of 1537 the marquis Pizarro's colleague Almagro, returning from 
an expedition to Chili, dispersed the rebels round Cuzco, and 
caused a civil war by marching on Lima with a view to its. occupation 
in his own interest. He was defeated, captured, and executed by 



386 A History of the World 

Pizarro's brothers in April, 1538, and in June, 1541, the conqueror 
of Peru ended his career in assassination by some of Almagro's 
vengeful friends. 

The Peruvians, cruelly treated by the Spaniards in forced labour 
at the silver-mines and in the tillage of the soil, were also compelled 
to adopt the Catholic religion, and, so far as might be, to set aside 
the old modes of thought and culture. The ecclesiastical system 
of an intolerant priesthood was soon established in full force, with 
its hierarchy and swarms of clerics and monks, and an inquisitorial 
system which visited every village in the territory. The University 
of Lima, the most ancient in the New World, was founded in 1551, 
and another arose at Cuzco in 1598. The death of Pizarro was 
followed by a troublous time of contest between Spanish parties, 
one of which was for obeying the " New Laws " from Spain, 
enjoining equitable treatment of the Indians, and the other for 
maintaining the despotic system. The colonial policy of Spain in 
Peru was finally settled by Francisco de Toledo, viceroy from 
1569 to 1580, who based his legislation on that of the old Incas. 
The amount of tribute paid by Indians was fixed, with exemption 
for males under 18 and over 50, and native chiefs were permitted 
to act as magistrates and collectors of the revenue. On the other 
hand, one-seventh of the people in every village were made subject 
to forced labour, usually in the silver-mines. The violation of the 
laws laid down by Toledo, and the abuse of the forced-labour 
system, under some of his successors, caused great misery in Peru, 
and, to a large extent, depopulation. The Span'sh government 
in Europe was ever calling for treasure from the mines, and the 
people toiled to death to supply these, rapacious demands. In 
1780 a general insurrection brought to the front a descendant of 
the Incas, who took the name of Tupac Amaru, the last nominal 
native ruler, unjustly put to death by Toledo more than two 
centuries previously. The rebels were reduced to submission only 
after a long struggle, and their leader, cruelly put to death, really 
founded the independence of his country by the feeling which his 
heroic contest had aroused. We shall hereafter see the issue of 
this matter. 

The opening of the passage to the East round the Cape was an 
achievement of the latter part of the heroic age of Portuguese 
history, under the successor of John II., Manoel or Emmanuel 
"the Fortunate." Nearly every year of his reign of a quarter of a 
century was distinguished by discoveries and by daring feats of 



Da Gama's Voyage to India 387 

arms, and the fame of Portuguese travellers and generals is rivalled 
by that of the poets and prose-writers of the same period. The 
monarch's own chief interest lay in the old vain dream of some 
previous sovereigns that Spain might be annexed by a ruler of 
Portugal. Under the system of absolute monarchy established by 
Jjhn II., the nobles, deprived of power at home, devoted them- 
selves to the career of discovery and conquest abroad, and most 
of the great men in this line belonged to high families. In July, 
1497, a fleet of four ships set sail from Lisbon, under the command 
of Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of the royal household, son of an 
experienced mariner, taking with hirn two able sea-captains, his 
brother Paul da Gama and Nicolas Coelho. The dangers of the 
voyage have been sung by Camoens in his famous epic * poem 
The Lusiads (" Lusitanians "). After encountering terrific weather, 
the voyagers only reached St. Helena Bay, north of the Cape, in 
four months, and, rounding the Cape at the end of the year, 
Da Gama, having had much further trouble from storms and from 
mutiny among his crews, reached the little town of Melinda, to the 
north of Zanzibar, early in 1498. The friendly native monarch lent 
him a skilful pilot, and he then steered eastwards for his destination, 
but it was the wrong season for calm weather in the Indian Ocean, 
and only on May 20th, 1498, after a voyage of n months from the 
Tagus, did the Portuguese cast anchor off Calicut, on the Malabar 
coast of India. In September, 1499, Da Gama was back at Lisbon, 
where he was received with enthusiasm like that which had greeted 
Columbus in Spain. King Emmanuel assumed a sounding title 
as " Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, 
Arabia, Persia, and India," confirmed to him by a bull of Pope 
Alexander VI. in 1502, and erected the magnificent church of 
Belem in gratitude for his subject's contribution to Portuguese 
glory. Da Gama, now " Dora Vasco," was created a Count and 
" Admiral of the Indian Seas," with a large revenue to be levied 
on the trade in the East, and was allowed to quarter the royal 
arms with his own. Thus began the commercial and other inter- 
course, by way of the Cape, between Asia and Europe, which was 
mainly in Portuguese hands for about a century. In order to give 
some idea of Portuguese enterprise at this time, we may note that 
in 1501 Castella discovered St. Helena and Ascension; in that 
year and 1503, Vespucci, then in the Portuguese service, visited the 
Rio de la Plata ; in 1506 Tristao da Cunha discovered the island, 
now a British possession, bearing his name, and Pereira Coutinho 



388 A History of the World 

explored Madagascar and Mauritius; in 1509 Lopes de Sequeira 
occupied Malacca and explored Sumatra ; in 15 12 Serrao discovered 
the Moluccas; in 15 13 Mascarenhas first touched at the lie de 
Bourbon (Reunion); in 1516 Coelho voyaged up the coast of 
Cochin China and explored Siam ; in 15 17 De Andrade settled at 
Canton, and, four years later, made his way to Pekin. We have 
already seen Cortereal in Labrador, and Magalhaes (Magellan) in 
the Pacific. 

The effects of the two great geographical and maritime achieve- 
ments of this memorable period — the discovery of America and of 
the sea-route to the East — may now be noted. The Atlantic and 
Indian Oceans, instead of the Mediterranean Sea, became the great 
highways of commerce. The Eastern trade in silk, cotton, pearls, 
spices, and other articles of luxury, formerly carried on partly through 
central Asia, and partly by Arabia and the Persian Gulf, by the Red 
Sea and the Isthmus of Suez, was transferred from the commercial 
republics of Italy to the nations of western Europe, hitherto 
largely excluded from the traffic. The loss of profitable routes due 
to the conquests of Islam, and especially to the sway of the Turks in 
south-eastern Europe and western Asia, had already wrought much 
mischief to Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. Their merchants were now 
left out in the cold, and life and movement were succeeded by 
vacancy and silence in those busy and crowded centres of trade. 
The prosperity of Alexandria also came to an end with the voyage 
of Da Gama which gave Portugal a monopoly of the Eastern trade. 
The great historical central sea was now no longer to be the chief 
scene of human intercourse and civilisation. Western Europe — 
France and England, Holland and Spain — became the centres of 
culture, in succession to southern and central Europe — Italy and 
Germany. When a century has rolled away from the time under 
review, we shall find genius and greatness established in the western 
or maritime states of Europe, the states which are to engage in the 
struggle for the New World presenting so grand a field for colonisa- 
tion and trade. England, which in Plantagenet days had scarcely 
been a maritime state, and was unable to control even the piracy of 
the Channel, and, warlike enough for land-contests, was destitute 
of a regular naval force, began to aim at greatness in commerce and 
at power upon the seas. In manufactures, her people, aroused from 
a state of dependence on Flanders and other foreign sources of 
supply, began to work for themselves on a larger scale, and the 
traffic on the ocean which began with the opening-up of the 



Europe before the Reformation 389 

Americas was the first step towards British possession of the carrying- 
trade of the world. The two great western states of Europe, France 
and England, were placed in the van of intellectual progress, and 
attained a position which they have never lost 



Chapter II. — Europe before the Reformation. 

Before dealing with the religious revolution of the 16th century, 
the mighty event which is the greatest in the history of civilisation 
since Christianity superseded Paganism, the event which is the real 
beginning of modern history, we must take a brief glance at the 
state of Europe on the eve of the great revolt against Rome. The 
invasion of Italy by the French, under Charles VIII., in the autumn 
of 1494, was the beginning of great changes south of the Alps, 
making the peninsula an object of attack by foreign powers, then 
a battle-field for foreign sovereigns engaged in settling their own 
quarrels, and finally rendering her people subject to foreign conquest 
and domination until the latter half of the 19th century. The ultimate 
failure of Charles was followed by the French conquest of Milan in 
1500, and by the Spanish conquest of Naples in 1504, after the 
complete defeat of Louis XI I. 's troops by Ferdinand of Spain's 
famous general, Gonsalvo di Cordova, called by the Spanish El 
Gran Capitan (The Great Captain), one of the greatest warriors of 
the age, who had served with much distinction in the war with the 
Moors of Granada, and now for some years ruled the Neapolitan 
territories as viceroy with a justice and mildness which strengthened 
the Spanish hold on southern Italy. At this time Genoa became 
subject to France, with the management of her own affairs, and 
Pisa, after a contest of 15 years' duration, was overcome by 
Florence. 

The Papacy was held from 1492 to 1503 by the infamous 
Roderigo Borgia, born at Valencia, in Spain, in 143 1, and known 
in history as Pope Alexander VI. His domestic and foreign policy 
was full of treachery. He levied oppressive dues in all Christian 
states, sold " indulgences " or remissions from the temporal punish- 
ment due for sin, and set aside in his own favour the wills made 
by cardinals. It was the wickedness of this Pope that specially 
stirred the eloquence of the Dominican friar Girolamo (Jerome) 
Savonarola of Florence, who called for his deposition, and became 
a martyr in the cause of truth and purity in 1498. Alexander's son 
26 



390 A History of the World 

Cesare Borgia, who had cast off his ecclesiastical orders after 
becoming an archbishop and a cardinal, was a man of great energy 
and unscrupulous ambition. He conquered the Romagna from 
its many petty lords, putting to death the heirs of ruling families 
in the cities which he gained, and thus creating a principality 
for himself. Julius II., Pope from 1503 to 15 13, was a man of war- 
like character who aimed at strengthening the Papal sovereignty, 
and ending foreign influence in Italy. In order to regain cities 
which had been seized by Venice, he formed the League of Cambray 
in 1508 against the great republic, by combining in his interest 
the emperor Maximilian of Germany, Louis XII. of France, and 
Ferdinand of Spain. The territory of Venice, which in 1503 had 
made a truce with the Turks, after 50 years of warfare, now 
extended from Aquileia to the Adda, and southwards to Rimini 
and Ravenna, and included the coast of Dalmatia, some islands 
of the Archipelago, Cyprus, Crete, some points in the Morea 
(Peloponnesus), and some towns in the kingdom of Naples. The 
dismemberment of the Venetian possessions was planned and war 
was declared in 1509. Louis crossed the Adda, severely defeated 
the republican troops, and recovered some former territory of the 
duchy of Milan. The Pope regained the lost cities of the Romagna. 
Venice seemed on the point of ruin, and was making great prepara- 
tions for the defence of the city itself, in case of need, having 
abandoned her territory on the Italian mainland, when a turn of 
fortune came in the surprise of Padua, and the successful resistance 
made when it was besieged by Maximilian. The republic was 
delivered by the Pope's withdrawal from the alliance early in 
15 10, and his formation of the Holy League, with the republic, 
Maximilian, and Ferdinand of Spain, for the purpose of driving 
the " Barbarians," meaning the French, out of Italy. There was 
fierce fighting in Lombardy, where the famous Gaston de Foix, 
a nephew of Louis, after defeating the Swiss at Como and Milan 
in 15 1 1, took Brescia by storm from the Venetian troops, a feat 
of arms in which he was aided by the illustrious Chevalier de 
Bayard. In April, 15 12, in a great battle before the walls of 
Ravenna, the French defeated the combined Spanish and Papal 
forces, losing the gallant Gaston in the moment of victory, at the 
age of only 23. The Swiss in the pay of the allies then drove 
the French out of the Milanese territory and Lombardy, and the 
power of France in Italy ended for the time in the further loss 
of Genoa. The Medici family were, at the same time, restored 



Europe before the Reformation 391 

to their former power in Florence. Pope Julius II. continued the 
sale of "indulgences" in order to obtain money for the building 
of St. Peter's at Rome, and this proceeding became, as will be 
seen, one of the causes of the Reformation. On his death in 15 13, 
Giovanni de' Medici, born at Florence in 1475, became Pope as 
Leo X. He was a great supporter of the Renaissance, caring 
far more for artistic and literary culture than for theology or 
ecclesiastical affairs. Eager for the completion of St. Peter's, Leo 
continued, on a larger scale, the sale of indulgences to the faithful 
in Christian lands. 

In France, Louis XII., who reigned from 1498 to 15 15, has been 
already seen, in foreign policy, in connection with Italian affairs. 
He was a kindly ruler, showing the strictest economy and honesty 
in finance, maintaining order, and promoting commerce, tillage, 
and other industry, in which beneficent work he was greatly aided 
by his able and energetic minister Cardinal d'Amboise, a lover 
of the people, and a man who had a large share in reforming the 
administration of justice, extending the postal service, and compiling 
the laws into a single book of statutes. Francis I., nephew and 
son-in-law of Louis, succeeding him in January, 15 15, was a brave, 
dissolute, superficially brilliant, and really frivolous man, whose 
chief merit was his liberal patronage of literature and art. He 
betrayed the interests of the French national Church by making a 
concordat, in 15 16, with Leo X., which conceded to the Pope an 
absolute supremacy in France, and independence of all Church 
councils. He was paid for this surrender by the transference to 
himself, from the ecclesiastical corporations, of the right of nomina- 
tion to bishoprics and abbeys, the bargain being concluded against 
the protests of the clergy and the University and Parliament of 
Paris. His religious " orthodoxy " was proved by the yearly burning 
of " heretics " by dozens, the dispatch of hundreds to the horrible 
slavery of the galleys, and the banishment of thousands, and, near 
the close of his reign, by the massacre of several thousand heretical 
Vaudois, men, women, and children, on the borders of Provence. 
The results of his jealous rivalry with Charles V. will appear in the 
history of that powerful monarch. The boasted " honour " of this 
sham-chivalrous sovereign did not prevent him from instantly 
violating, when he was free, with the Pope's absolution, a treaty 
sworn to in captivity, and his reign was productive of severe loss 
in men and treasure to France. In September, 15 15, renewing 
the war in Italy, Francis reconquered the Milanese territory by 



392 A History of the World 

the severe defeat of Swiss mercenaries at Marignano, but the Papal 
troops, some years later, drove the French out of Italy, and the 
"Constable," or commander-in-chief, of France, Charles Bourbon, 
a man of great ability, courage, and wealth, the foremost subject 
of the king, deserted his cause in 1523, and fought against Francis 
in the great battle of Pavia two years later. 

In Germany, Maximilian I., son of Frederick III., was elected 
emperor on his father's death in 1493, and held the office until his 
own decease in 15 19. A noble specimen of the knight of chivalry, 
he was eager, restless, adventurous, and ambitious, forming schemes 
in which he usually failed. In home-affairs he rendered good 
service through his law passed by the famous Diet at Worms in 
1495, making an end of the pernicious private warfare between petty 
princes and nobles, in compelling them to bring their quarrels 
before a new supreme court called the Imperial Chamber, consisting 
of a chief judge and 16 assessors, all nobles or lawyers. In 1500 
the emperor, jealous of these new powers, caused the Diet of 
Augsburg to establish the Aulic Council at Vienna, as a rival to the 
other tribunal. He also established a regular postal system, and 
divided the empire into ten circles or districts for the better 
maintenance of the public peace. He failed in Italian warfare 
against French invaders, and in his reign began the long-standing 
rivalry and hostility between Germany and France. In 1499 
Switzerland was practically lost to the empire and became an indepen- 
dent state. Some matrimonial alliances in this period were of great 
importance to the reigning Austrian family and to Spain. Maxi- 
milian's son Philip, who had inherited the Netherlands from his 
mother, Mary of Burgundy, married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand 
and Isabella of Spain. On his death in 1506 he left two sons, 
Charles and Ferdinand. The elder son, Charles, became ancestor 
of the elder or Spanish line of the Hapsburg house, and in him 
came the union of the Netherlands with the crown of Spain. The 
younger son, Ferdinand, ancestor of the younger or German line, 
married Anna, sister of Louis II., last king of Bohemia and Hungary, 
and this union brought the crowns of those countries to the house 
of Austria. 

When we turn to the British Isles, we find a new era, the Tudor 
age which begins our modern history, opening with Henry VII. 
(1485- 1509). The state-system of Europe was now established in 
the form which endured, in its main features, for about three 
centuries, until the first French Revolution. Foreign policy and 



Europe before the Reformation 393 

the intrigues of diplomacy connected with the "balance of power" 
assume a new importance. The first Tudor sovereign, a strong- 
willed, able, and crafty man, rendered England the service of 
maintaining order and peace for nearly a quarter of a century. The 
great landed class was kept in check under his semi-despotic rule, 
and the wealthy were freely plundered in his interest by Morton, 
archbishop of Canterbury, the chief minister, and by Empson 
and Dudley, two barons of the Exchequer Court, wielding the 
powers of the revived Court of Star Chamber. An immense 
treasure was thus accumulated by the king, only to be squandered 
in his son's joyous youth. A middle class of traders, manufacturers, 
and farmers was meanwhile growing up, to become in later days 
the backbone of revived Parliamentary power against the Crown. 
The impostors and rebels Lambert Simnel, who claimed to be earl 
of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence, and so heir to the throne, 
and Perkin Warbeck, who asserted that he was Richard, duke 
of York, the younger of the two princes generally held to have 
perished in the Tower under Richard III., were easily dealt with. 
Two important marriages in the royal house occurred. Henry's 
daughter Margaret married James IV. of Scotland, a union which 
afterwards brought a Scottish king to the English throne in the 
person of James VI. and I. In 1501 the king's elder son Arthur, 
at the age of 14, was married to the lady, then aged 15, commonly 
called Katharine of Aragon, a younger daughter of Ferdinand 
and Isabella of Spain. On the Prince of Wales' death a few months 
later, a dispensation was obtained from Pope Julius II. authorising 
the marriage of Katharine with her deceased husband's brother 
Henry. This union was closely connected with the next king's 
quarrel with the Pope, the first step towards the separation of the 
Church in England from the Roman See. 

Henry VIII. (1509-1547) was troubled by no competitors for 
the throne, uniting as he did the claims of both lines, Lancaster 
and York. His character needs little discussion, though it may 
be remarked that he has suffered with posterity from the simple 
fact of his being so "very much married," like the Bluebeard of 
folk-lore, and from being, through no fault of his own, so unfortunate 
with his wives as to earn the contemporary title of " the great 
widower." Educated for the Church, he was a man of learning. 
His handsome face, athletic form, and bluff, hearty manners, made 
and kept him popular, and, with all his faults, he was, mentally, 
physically, and morally, a thorough Englishman. In all the sports 



394 A History of the World 

of his time and country he excelled ; his tyrannous self-will was only 
the exaggeration of English arrogance and resolution ; his intellectual 
ability and attainments won for him the high esteem of such men 
as Erasmus, Colet, and Thomas More. In home and foreign affairs 
he was, at any rate, a strong and able ruler, and to this energetic 
patriot England owes her first modern Royal Navy, with the establish- 
ment of the "Navy Office" (Board of Admiralty); of the Trinity 
House, still dealing with our pilots, beacons, lighthouses, and buoys, 
and of dockyards at Woolwich, Deptford, and Portsmouth, the two 
former of which, now dismantled, were of great service until the 
days of steam and of ironclads. His foreign policy made him a 
member of the " Holy League " against France, and there was some 
warfare, of little moment, at various times, with that country. 
Parliamentary power was, to a large extent, in abeyance during the 
reign, except to pass bills at the royal pleasure, but in 1523 the 
House of Commons, with Sir Thomas More as Speaker, resisted 
an insolent demand of Wolsey for an excessive sum, and the attempt 
to enforce payment of an illegal tax caused a rebellion which made 
even Henry to quail, with the immediate withdrawal of the demand. 
Leaving the subject here until we deal with the Reformation, we turn 
to Scottish and Irish affairs. 

James IV. of Scotland (1488-15 13) adhered to the French 
alliance. He showed some wisdom and energy in checking the 
wild Highland clansmen, and was active in encouraging seamanship 
and ship-building. Scotland now first became a naval power, some- 
times successfully engaging, under Sir Andrew Barton and Sir Andrew 
Wood, in conflict with English vessels. The king was accomplished 
as a linguist and in the athletic contests of the tourney-ground, and 
maintained a splendid court, at which was seen an ambassador from 
Spain, then approaching the height of power and glory. It was 
a rash and fatal proceeding when James, as an ally of France, 
invaded the territory of his brother-in-law, Henry VIII. In Sep- 
tember, 15 13, the great defeat at Flodden brought the death of the 
king himself and of a host of his nobles and knights, with mourning 
fur almost every family of note in the realm, and a total loss of over 
8,000 men. 

In the reign of Henry VII. a real attempt was made to reduce 
to order the territory called " the Pale," extending northwards from 
Dublin to Dundalk, and westwards to Trim and Kells. The " lords 
of the Pale," in 1487, as supporters of the Yorkist faction, welcomed 
the impostor Lambert Simnel in Dublin with enthusiasm, and had 



Europe before the Reformation 395 

him crowned in presence of the earl of Kildare, the deputy-governor ; 
but the rebellious plot collapsed with the defeat and capture of 
Simnel in England at the battle of Stoke. The first Tudor king 
was a merciful man, and Kildare, on due submission and an oath 
of allegiance, was pardoned and retained in office. He was, 
however, soon removed from his post, and in 1494 Sir Edward 
Poynings was sent over from England as lord-deputy, accompanied 
by a force of 1,000 men-at-arms, and some English men of law 
who filled the posts of chancellor, treasurer, and other high officials 
made- vacant by the ejection of suspected occupants. The ever- 
lasting quarrels between the two powerful houses, the Geraldines 
(earls of Kildare) and the Butlers (earls of Ormond), kept not only 
the Pale but most of Ireland in trouble. Kildare was attainted 
as a traitor, and removed as a prisoner to London. A parliament 
held at Drogheda in 1495 passed the two famous Poynings' Laws 
or Acts, or Statutes of Drogheda, which were for nearly three 
centuries the basis of English rule in Ireland. The chief provisions 
were that all existing English legislation was henceforth to bind 
subjects in Ireland ; that no parliament should be there summoned 
without the king's special permission ; and that all statutes to be 
passed in Irish parliaments should be submitted first to the king 
and Privy Council in England, and, on return, be adopted without 
change. The Irish parliament was to be, in fact, a legislative body 
wholly bound by outside authority, knowing little of and, too often, 
caring little for the special needs of the country chiefly concerned. 
The Statute of Kilkenny, aimed at Irish usages and intermarriage, 
was also, in many parts, re-enacted, and the authority of the lord- 
deputy in Dublin was restricted to the Pale. 

A sense of humour compels us to return to the earl of Kildare. 
After lying for a year captive in the Tower, he was brought before 
Henry and there allowed to plead his cause. His wit and audacity 
were marvellous. Charged with burning the church at Cashel, he 
solemnly assured the king that he would not have thought of doing 
so if he had not believed that the archbishop was then inside it. 
The archbishop alluded to was one of his hearers. When he was 
advised by Henry to obtain a good counsel, he replied that he 
would have the best in England — the king himself. At last the 
patience of the accusers was at an end, and they cried out that 
" All Ireland could not govern the earl of Kildare." " So it seems," 
said the king ; " then let the earl of Kildare govern all Ireland." 
He was at once released and again made lord-deputy. He justified 



396 A History of the World 

the king's conduct by energetic doings in the cause of order. 
Rebels were attainted ; garrisons were placed at Cork and Kinsale ; 
towns in Leinster, ruined in native raids, were rebuilt. Within the 
Pale, Kildare held despotic sway, and outside it he kept all other 
power in check. 

Evil days for the Geraldines came with the accession of Henry VIII. 
Wolsey was their sworn enemy, and the conduct of Kildare had 
caused many complaints. In 1520 Henry adopted the policy of 
ruling Ireland again direct from London, and sent over the earl 
of Surrey as lord-deputy. He formed the plan, thoroughly practical 
and statesmanlike, of a complete conquest of the country, district 
by district, with fortresses and strong garrisons for permanent 
security. This plan was unwisely rejected, and Surrey, at his own 
earnest request, was recalled. Kildare was again ruler ; then he 
was summoned to London and thrown into the Tower through the 
influence of the Ormonds with Wolsey ; restored to office, and 
finally deposed in 1534, to become again a prisoner in the Tower, 
where he shortly afterwards died. His son Thomas, acting as 
vice-deputy, revolted on false news of his father's execution in 
London, and took possession of Dublin. Allen, the archbishop, 
a foe of the Geraldines, was murdered on the coast, near Clontarf, 
as he sought escape to England. The time was a critical one for 
Henry, who was in the midst of his struggle with the Pope, and 
under excommunication. A Spanish landing in Ireland was to be 
feared, and Sir William Skeffington, with a large force of troops, 
was sent over as governor. The choice was a bad one, and the 
old, cautious, feeble lord-deputy remained idle in Dublin, while 
the Geraldines ravaged the country up to near its walls. The 
earl of Ormond, marching up from the south, was the chief 
support of the government. Skeffington at last moved out, and, 
with the help of his artillery, breached and stormed the strong 
Maynooth Castle, the chief fortress of the Geraldines. The de- 
fenders, including two priests, were at once hanged, and this blow 
ended the revolt. A new deputy, Lord Leonard Grey, in power 
from 1536 to 1539, warred with success against the tribes, and 
within a year or two all the leading Geraldines of Leinster, save a 
boy of 12 years, had been taken and executed. In 1541 Henry 
assumed the title of " King of Ireland," and a parliament held at 
Dublin included some Irish chiefs, of whom O'Neill was created 
earl of Tyrone and O'Brien became earl of Thomond. 







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EUROPE AT THE TIME 




OF THE REFORMATION. 



[/>. 396. 



The Reformation 397 



Chapter III. — The Reformation ; Wars of Charles V. 

The law of human progress made the Reformation a needful and 
inevitable phenomenon. No man can believe exactly as his grand- 
father believed. He enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his 
view of the universe, and uncertain belief leads to unsound practice, 
to error, injustice, and mischief in divers forms, and thus provides 
material for mental and spiritual revolution. The sublime 
Catholicism of a Dante becomes, to many minds, incredible in 
theory, and being further defaced by faithless and dishonest practice, 
has to be torn asunder by a Luther, as .much a hater and breaker of 
idols as Mohammed was of the wooden gods of his day and country. 
Protestantism, for good or evil, was the grand root from which 
branched out all subsequent European history ; it was the beginning 
of a new genuine sovereignty and order.* The Reformation was a 
return to truth and reality in opposition to semblance and falsehood. 
These utterances of the sage of Chelsea represent the general view 
of Protestantism in every part of the world. The central fact of 
the Reformation is the breaking-off from Papal Christianity, from the 
Catholic Church, of the nations which became known as Protestant, 
and the ending of an order of things which had existed in Europe 
from the close of the 8th century. This event has been set forth 
by historians in many various lights — as a revolt of the laity against 
the clergy ; of the Teutonic races against the Italians ; of the 
kingdoms of Europe against the Papal claims to interfere with 
monarchs and to tax their subjects in the interest of a caste 
dwelling in a foreign land. To some it is an outburst of wrath 
against wealthy and corrupt clerics, a body from whom all spiritual 
life seemed to have vanished, an order of men who had become 
grossly unfit to be spiritual guides of the people. Others see in it 
a renewal of the youth of the Church by a return to primitive forms 
of doctrine, with the rejection of all additions of theory and practice 
made since the days of early Christianity. It is certain that among 
the doctrines and practices of the Church which were attacked as 
being unscriptural, and as opposed to primitive faith and usage, 
were the use of images, and of prayers for the intercession of saints : 
the doctrine of purgatory ; the employment of the Latin tongue, 
now unknown to the laity, in the services ; the enforced celibacy of 
priests ; the enforced confession of sins to a priest ; and especially 
the doctrine of the real bodily presence of Christ in the consecrated 



398 A History of the World 

elements at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or, in other words, 
the transubstantiation alleged to be wrought by the priest in 
the sacrifice of the Mass. The essence of the Reformation lies 
deeper than all this, and was fraught with mightier consequences 
than any of these things involved. It was the assertion of the 
principle of individuality ; of the right of private judgment ; of true 
spiritual freedom. Obedience to a clerical caste had been hitherto 
the first duty of man. Truth, held to be something positive and 
external, was dealt out to the passive layman by its stewards, the 
priesthood. The saving virtue of truth lay in its formal and 
unreasoning acceptance, without regard to its being felt and known 
by the acceptor to be truth. Outward works — penances and 
pilgrimages, and charitable gifts — were held to be sources of 
holiness of heart and life. The Visible Church had become a mere 
government and hierarchy, with Deity represented in it by an 
infallible Vicar of God, the Pope ; or in the Mass ; or in the 
doctrine of the priest's power to remit sins. All this had ceased to 
accord with the growing intelligence of mankind, and was suddenly 
rent in pieces by the convulsion of the Reformation, and flung away 
by the more progressive peoples of Europe. Henceforth, the 
individual was to make truth for himself by independent examination 
and reasoning, and the truth, thus recognised and grasped, was to 
act from within on the outward life. It was the misfortune of 
the reformers, one inevitable from human nature and from the 
circumstances of the time, that the assertors of freedom violated in 
many cases the very principles on which they had cut themselves 
off from the Roman Church. They were intolerant of free opinion 
in others, and they sought to enforce agreement by civil penalties. 
No faith, on their own principles, could have any value unless it 
were freely given, and, since they laid no claim to infallibility, and 
set up human reason as a standard by which revelation should be 
judged, it was absurd and even criminal to persecute for differences 
of opinion, to mingle religion with politics, and to allow sovereigns, 
or the will of the majority, to impose on a whole country a particular 
form of worship, or, in other words, to set up national Churches, 
enjoying landed wealth, exclusive political privilege, and the power 
of coercing those who dissented from the creed or practice of the 
" establishment." Protestantism was long in learning the lesson of 
toleration, but the fact of its being happily learnt at last is a noble 
historical vindication of the principle that freedom is the great cure, 
the only cure, for the evils of newly acquired freedom, and that 



The Reformation 399 

liberty has wisdom, mercy, and moderation as its assured, final, and 
permanent fruits.* 

Early in the 15th century Germany was ripe for religious 
reform, as the country where, outside Italy, every abuse of the 
mediaeval Church was seen at its worst, in the ignorance and 
sensual lives of the clergy, the burdensome Papal exactions, and 
the shameful traffic in church-benefices. The air was full of 
explosive matter, and the spark came in the collision of Martin 
Luther and the Dominican friar John Tetzel. Luther, one of 
the supremely great men of history, a man of mighty intellect, 
" whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries 
and epochs of the world," a moral hero of the highest rank, was 
born in 1483, at Eisleben in Saxony, the son of poor mine-labourers. 
The incidents of his earlier manhood are well known : his turning 
to a religious life through the impression made when his friend fell 
dead by lightning at his feet ; his education at the University 
of Erfurt ; his three years' study, as an Augustine monk in the 
same town, of St. Paul and St. Augustine ; his apprehension of 
the doctrine of "justification by faith." Ordained a priest in 1507, 
he became, two years later, a lecturer on the Scriptures at the 
new University of Wittenberg, founded by the Elector Frederick 
of Saxony, a wise prince and zealous Catholic. The originality of 
Luther's teaching was soon marked by his hearers, and his influence 
became widely spread through the distribution in Germany, France, 
and England of his printed sermons on "salvation by free grace." 
In 15 1 1 he was sent to Rome on a mission by the authorities 
of his monastery, and he was greatly moved by the spectacle of 
Papal corruption at its fountain-head. He ceased to believe in 
Pope and priest according to the traditional views, and adopted 
the principle of individual responsibility. In 15 16 Tetzel, engaged 
in selling indulgences, or remissions of the purgatorial punishment 
for sin, both past and future, appeared in Saxony, and advertised 
his traffic, as he went about from place to place, in a very shameless 
way, extolling his certificates above the Papal " bulls," which 
required repentance as a condition for pardon. The bait took 
largely with the ignorant and superstitious, and money flowed 
in freely to the coffers. Luther, now a Doctor of Theology in 
Wittenberg University, in October, 15 17, nailed upon the door of 
the Castle Church his famous Thesis of 95 propositions, denying 

* Much of the above is due to Mr. Bryce's masterly standard work, The 
Holy Roman Empire, 



400 A History of the World 

that the Pope had power to forgive sins. He also called on 
the Pope (Leo X.), in bold but respectful terms, to stop the 
sale of indulgences, and to reform corruptions in the Church. In 
his writings and discussions the Erfurt monk, in 1518 and 1519, 
overthrew all opponents in argument — Tetzel himself, Eck, and 
Cajetan, the Papal legate — displaying an ample store of humour, 
acuteness, vigour, reasoning, and Biblical learning. He quickly 
found supporters in many quarters, and the whole of Germany 
was aroused. Luther's chief fellow-labourer in the work of religious 
reform was the amiable, profoundly learned Philip Melanchthon 
(a Greek translation of his real surname Schvvarzerd, " black 
earth"), a master of lucid exposition, who became, in 15 18, 
Professor of Greek at Wittenberg. His moderation of character 
and expression usefully tempered the vehemence of Luther, and 
his wisdom was of vast service to the cause. Luther had by 
this time fulfilled his threat of " beating a hole in Tetzel's drum." 
In 15 18 Leo, at last taking the new movement seriously, ordered 
Luther to come to Rome and answer for his Wittenberg Thesis. 
He declined to appear, or to retract his utterances, and in 1520, 
irresistibly urged on by what lay within, he issued treatises attacking 
not only the abuses of the Papacy and its claims to supremacy, 
but also the doctrinal system of the Roman or Western Church. 
This audacious conduct brought matters to a head between the 
reformer and the Pope. A " bull " was launched against Luther's 
writings, and the reformer retorted by burning that document, 
along with the Papal canons and decrees, in December, 1520, 
before an assembled multitude of doctors and students of the 
university, and of citizens, at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg. 
He was then excommunicated, with all his supporters, and was 
followed, in this formal separation from the Roman Church, by 
many German nobles and learned men, and by the University 
of Wittenberg, which was crowded with students from all parts 
of Europe. 

The Reformation had now fairly begun, and entered, in Germany, 
on what may be called its political phase, in which Luther's side 
was taken by many who cared little for theological views or for 
the justice of his cause. Mere desire to revolt from authority; 
self-interest, in release from payment of tribute to the Roman See ; 
and a sordid eagerness for plundering the landed and other pos- 
sessions of the Church, gave him allies in princes and nobles, 
as well as in patriots and in sincere seekers after truth. It was 



The Reformation 401 

at this juncture that a new supporter of the Papal cause appeared 
on the scene in the person of the emperor Charles V., elected in 
1 5 19, in succession to his grandfather Maximilian. He was the 
most powerful monarch of his day or for seven, preceding centuries, 
ruling dominions vaster than any seen under one sway since the 
days of Karl the Great. By his father Philip's death, he was master 
of the Netherlands. His grandfather Ferdinand's death in 15 16 
had given him Spain, southern Italy (Naples and Sicily), and 
Sardinia, and he had large territories in eastern and southern 
Germany. Born at Ghent in 1500, he was now 20 years of age. 
Without being a great man, he was a very able ruler, cool, subtle, 
prudent, energetic, an excellent judge of men to serve him in 
every capacity. He failed in the chief purpose of his life, the 
bringing back of all Germany, by policy or force, into allegiance 
to the Pope, and his ambition led him into constant and costly 
warfare. He could not but oppose the reforming movement, 
though he had no love for the Papacy as a secular power. A 
sincere Catholic, he was also king, in Spain, of the most bigoted 
race in Europe. As emperor, he was bound to support the Church, 
since the Empire and the Church had the same basis, and, on 
the theory of the " Holy Roman Empire," the secular ruler's chief 
duty was to maintain the spiritual ruler against every foe. In 152 1 
Charles presided at the famous Diet of Worms. Luther's books 
were at once ordered to be burned, and the great offender was 
summoned to appear before the emperor and princes. Modern 
European history shows no grander scene than that which ensued. 
With superhuman courage, Luther eagerly took the opportunity 
presented to him of confessing the truth before the assembled 
powers of Germany. True, he was armed with a safe-conduct 
from Charles, but he had before his eyes the case of Huss, burnt 
at Constance more than 100 years before, in spite of the safe- 
conduct from another emperor, the faithless Sigismund. The 
threats of foes were treated with disdain. The entreaties of friends, 
riding out from the city to meet him, in the hope of staying his 
steps in time, were met with the characteristic declaration from 
one who firmly believed in diabolical existence and power, " I 
am resolved to enter Worms although as many devils should 
set at me as there are tiles on the housetops." All Germany had 
been stirred by his heroism, and his progress to confront the Diet 
had resembled a triumph. He did enter Worms, and on the morrow, 
as he went to the hall of assembly, the people, crowding the 



4-02 A History of the World 

windows and roofs, adjured him not to recant, with the solemn 
words, " Whosoever denieth Me before men — — ! " They had little 
need to dread the issue. He entered the hall. On the one side sat 
the world's pomp and power — the emperor, the princes, the Papal 
nuncio, dignitaries spiritual and temporal ; on the other there stood 
up, in the cause of truth and freedom for the human spirit thence- 
forth and for ever so long as the world abides, one man, the 
poor miner's son. His speech, of two hours, was respectful, honest, 
and wise in tone. He admitted the presence of a large element 
of human infirmity in his writings. They were, he said, partly his 
own, partly derived from the Word of God. Not being allowed 
to defend his opinions in argument, he could not withdraw whatever 
stood on sound truth and the basis of the Scriptures. " Confute 
me," he cried in conclusion, " by proofs of Scripture, or else by 
plain just arguments : I cannot otherwise recant. For it is neither 
safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I : 
I can do no other. So help me God. Amen ! " On his return 
from Worms he was seized, in mock indignation and real friendship, 
by the Elector of Saxony, and carried off, for safety from his foes, 
to the old castle of the Wartburg, where he abode for about a 
year, adding to his priceless services to mankind by the noble 
translation of the Bible which not only aided the cause of the 
Reformation but enriched German literature. We need not pursue 
his story much further. He threw aside monasticism in 1524, and 
in the following year began a happier period of his life by marrying 
Katharina von Bora, one of nine nuns who, under the influence of 
his teaching, had renounced their vows. Many of the monasteries 
in Germany were soon deserted and the priests in Saxony took 
wives. The edict of Worms prohibited all new doctrines, after 
Luther had been placed under the ban of the empire, but nothing 
could now stay the progress of the Reformation. 

In 1525 the elector of Saxony, Philip, count of Hesse, and 
Albert of Brandenburg, duke of Prussia, publicly became 
" Lutherans," and the new form of religion, with a German liturgy 
and communion in both kinds, was adopted in many cities and 
states. The emperor, engaged in war with Francis I. of France, 
was obliged to let religious affairs drift in Germany, or leave them to 
his brother Ferdinand, who had been made governor of the Hapsburg 
lands. In 1526 an enactment of the Diet at Speier was favourable 
to the reformers, but in 1529, when the emperor had triumphed 
over Francis, Ferdinand and the Catholic party, in a second Speier 



The Reformation 403 

Diet, decreed the strict execution of the edict of Worms. The 
protest made by the " evangelicals " or reforming party at the Diet 
gave rise to the name <: Protestants." In 1530, at the Diet of 
Augsburg, the Protestant faith was presented in the Confession 
of Augsburg, drawn up by Melanchthon, but the Diet decreed that 
an end should be made of all religious innovations. The Pro- 
testants, on the rejection of what became the chief standard of 
faith among the Lutheran Churches of the Teutonic nations, and the 
threat of the " ban of the empire " for all who should disobey the 
decree, formed the alliance for mutual defence known as the 
Schmalkaldic League, agreed on by nine Lutheran princes at 
Schmalkalden in Hesse-Nassau, in April, 153 1. Eleven imperial 
cities joined the League. Civil war was avoided for a time because 
the emperor, whose German dominions were in danger from the 
Turks, could obtain no help from the Lutheran princes except on con- 
dition of his withdrawing the decree of Augsburg. He accordingly 
arranged, in 1532, the Religious Peace of Niirnberg (Nuremberg), 
revoking the obnoxious edict and conceding full freedom of worship 
to the Lutherans until the meeting of a new Diet or of a General 
Council of the Church. This closing of the ranks in Germany 
caused the immediate retreat of the Moslem forces. Charles was, 
however, resolved to put down heresy in Germany, if he could, 
and was only biding his time until his foes Francis I. and the 
Turks were finally disposed of. 

In February, 1546, Luther died at Eisleben, and was buried at 
Wittenberg. The measure of the intellectual and moral grandeur 
of his character is the hatred still borne towards him by the 
adherents of the Church which ought rather to cherish a feeling 
of gratitude to the man who compelled her, in very shame, to self- 
reform. His breadth of human sympathy, his spiritual genius, 
his energy, courage, strength of will, and consequent triumph over 
vast difficulties, have placed him on an eminence of renown in the 
history of the world from which no criticism or calumny have ever 
been able to lower him. The death of the reformer appeared to 
be the signal for war. The Council of Trent, summoned by Pope 
Paul III., at the emperor's request, had met in 1545. The 
Lutherans would not attend it, alleging that the Pope, as a party 
to the dispute, had prejudged their case as that of " heretics " The 
leaders of the Schmalkaldic League, John Frederick, elector of 
Saxony, and Philip, landgrave of Hesse, were placed under the ban 
of the empire, and both sides prepared for the appeal to arms 



404 A History of the World 

When the war opened, disunion and delay injured the cause of 
the League. With a large force at his command, Charles first 
subdued the free imperial cities connected with the Lutherans, and 
other supporters in southern Germany. In April, 1547, the victory 
of Miihlberg, gained over the Saxony troops near Torgau, on the 
Elbe, gave the emperor a complete triumph, and placed the elector 
and Philip of Hesse as prisoners in his hands. The electorate of 
Saxony was transferred to Duke Maurice, and the Catholic cause 
in Germany appeared to be safe. Maurice, however, soon resolved 
to change sides and to join the Lutherans, and made a secret 
treaty with Henry II. of France, who was willing, on political 
grounds only, to aid him against the emperor. Maurice, in 1552, 
marched southwards with a large force, .and nearly captured Charles 
by surprise at Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, while the French king, 
invading Lorraine as " Protector of the Liberties of Germany," 
seized the. territory of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and 
Verdun. The emperor, left unaided by the Catholic princes, who 
were jealous of his power, was compelled to liberate Philip of Hesse, 
and to conclude, in 1552, the Convention of Passau, granting free 
exercise of their religion to the Lutherans until the next Diet. In 
1555 the Diet of Augsburg concluded the "Religious Peace" 1 
which granted, to the Lutheran free cities and princes, freedom of 
worship, and the retention of ecclesiastical property that had been 
seized, and gave to the government of each state in Germany the 
right of tolerating both religions, or of suppressing either the one or 
the other. Such was, for the time, the settlement reached in 
Germany, a mere truce between two strongly opposed parties, each 
believing the other to hold deadly error in religious views, and the 
Catholics regarding the Protestants as possessors of stolen Church 
property. 

We may briefly notice the wars of Charles V. before dealing 
with the Reformation in other European countries. The enmity 
of Francis I. of France towards the emperor arose from the angry 
jealousy of the French king on his failure as a competitor for 
election to the empire. In 1522 the allied forces of the emperor 
and the Pope (Leo X.) drove the French from the Milanese 
territory, and Francis was prevented from entering Italy by sea 
through the capture of Genoa by the imperial troops. In the 
following year the French sovereign made another attempt on 
Lombardy, but his troops were again driven out in 1524, with the 
loss, during the retreat, of the Chevalier Bayard, mortally wounded 



Wars of Charles V. 4O5 

and made prisoner as he gallantly led the rear-guard. As the hero, 
of spotless fame, lay dying at the foot of a tree, still face to the 
foe, he replied to some words of pity from their leader, the renegade 
Constable Bourbon of France, with the rebuke, " I need no pity, 
dying as a man of honour should ; you are to be pitied, fighting 
against your king, your country, and your oath." Francis then 
crossed Mount Cenis and entered Milan, but in February, 1525, 
he was utterly defeated in front of Pavia by the Constable, losing 
thousands of men in the battle or by drowning in the Ticino, and 
being taken prisoner along with his brother-in-law the king of 
Navarre. Several of the greatest nobles and captains of France, 
and Richard de la Pole, grandson of the duke of Clarence (brother 
of Edward IV. of England), fighting on the French side, perished 
on this memorable day. This great victory established the power 
of Charles V. in northern Italy. The French king, taken as a 
captive to Spain, obtained his freedom in 1526 by the Treaty of 
Madrid, in which he renounced his claims to Milan, Genoa, and 
Naples. On his return to France he repudiated its terms as having 
been extorted by force. Meanwhile, a general movement in Italy, 
largely due to the oppressive conduct of the Spanish and other 
troops of the emperor, was made for the purpose of throwing off 
the foreign yoke. The people of Naples, Milan, and Genoa, 
wearied of the presence of garrisons who plundered and murdered 
at will, were combined with those of Venice, Florence, and the 
States of the Church, now under Pope Clement VII. (a Medici), 
in the "Holy League" against Charles, to which Francis and 
Henry VIII. of England were parties. The Constable, commanding 
the emperor's troops, defeated the Venetian army, and was then 
strongly reinforced from Germany and by the viceroy of Naples. 
Marching southwards, he crossed the Apennines in 1527, entered 
the upper valley of the Arno, and then made for Rome. The 
German troops were largely Lutheran, and eager to overthrow the 
Pope, and they and the Spaniards alike lusted for the spoil of 
the city. On May 6th, at daybreak, in a thick mist, the place was 
entered by escalade. The Swiss guard of the Pope and his allies 
met the assaulting columns with a firm resistance, and the Constable 
received a mortal wound. Then the place was stormed by furious 
and superior numbers, and Clement fled for refuge to the Castle 
of St. Angelo. 40,000 fierce troops, mad with rage and ardent for 
booty, were in full possession of the capital of the world. The 
Lutherans destroyed priceless pictures and statues, as idolatrous 
27 



406 A History of the World 

things \ the Spaniards surpassed themselves in cruelty and greed. 
For seven months the hapless inhabitants were the subjects of 
every kind of outrage, and the sack of Rome became a scandal 
to civilisation and a dark blot on the page of history. The Pope, 
in June, surrendered from lack of provisions, and, held in captivity 
till September, made his escape in disguise to Orvieto, in Perugia. 
Henry VIII. and Francis made a fresh alliance against Charles, 
and French troops entered Italy, took Alessandria, and surprised 
Pavia. The remains of the army at Rome were led away, by the 
emperor's commander, wasted by disease, and disorganised by 
license. Genoa became free by the skilful management of Andrea 
Doria. The French army went south and blockaded Naples, and 
the French and Genoese fleets repulsed the Spanish ships which 
strove to relieve the place. Genoa was lost to the cause by the 
folly of Francis in offending Doria, and the withdrawal of her ships 
left the French besiegers in a serious position. Disease wasted 
their ranks ; the enemy's horse harassed them, and nearly all the 
army ultimately perished. In 1527 the people of Florence, driving 
out the Medici, the Pope's relatives and supporters, joined France 
against the emperor, and drew on themselves the enmity of the 
Pope, who was now anxious to come to terms with Charles. In 
1529 the war ended with the Peace of Cambray, under which 
Francis paid a large indemnity and renounced his claims on Italy. 
In 1530 Charles was crowned "King of Italy" and Emperor by 
the Pope (Clement VII.), at Bologna, being the last holder of the 
imperial title so distinguished. He was now virtually, in his 
capacity as king of Spain, master of all the peninsula from the Alps 
to the extreme south, and throughout Sicily, and the struggle had 
ended in the humiliation of France, the greatness of Spain, and 
the slavery of Italy. 

Florence was attacked by an army of German cavalry and 
Spanish infantry, dispatched by the Pope with the consent of 
Charles. The city was defended by fortifications which had been 
strengthened under the supervision of Michel-Angelo, and had a 
militia-force raised at the instance of her ^famous deceased citizen 
Niccolo Machiavelli. In order to deprive besiegers of cover, the 
beautiful suburbs, with their villas and churches, oliveyards and 
vineyards, pleasant gardens and umbrageous trees, were laid waste 
for a mile around. An assault was repulsed, and at the end of 1529 
the enemy's camp was surprised and much injured in a night attack. 
In the course of a few months, however, the city was in distress 



Wars of Charles V. 407 

from a strict blockade, and the defeat of a relieving army com- 
pelled surrender. The great republic, after 400 years of freedom, 
was forced to receive the Medici as her masters, and was thus 
destroyed by the treachery and ambition of one of her own sons, 
Pope Clement VII. Many patriots were put to death, and the 
people suffered much during the next six years from the licentious 
conduct of a Papal garrison. On Clement's death in 1534, his 
successor, Paul III. (1534-1549), Alessandro Farnese, being desirous 
of aggrandising his family, rivals of the Medici, strove to help the 
Florentines against their ruling family, but the attempt failed, and 
in 1570, when Cosmo de' Medici was created Grand Duke of 
Tuscany by Pope Pius V., Florence ceased to have any independent 
political life, and became the mere capital of the grand-duchy. 
Under the successors of Cosmo, seven in number, the last dying 
in 1737, the state sank into a condition of decay. 

Among the expeditions of Charles V. were one against Bar- 
barossa, the piratical ruler of Tunis, in 1535, and another to Algiers 
in 1 54 1. Tunis was the key of the passage from the west to the 
eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and in such hands as those of 
Barbarossa it was a standing menace to the emperor's dominions 
in Sicily. Charles set forth from Barcelona with a fleet of 600 
vessels commanded by Doria of Genoa, having on board a choice 
body of Spanish, Italian, and German troops. Tunis was captured 
after some hard fighting, and for three days the city was given up 
to the brutal outrages, admitted even by the Catholic chroniclers, 
of his licentious soldiers. At this very time, in contrast with the 
conduct of " Christians," under the banners of the chief Catholic 
monarch, a grand vizier of the Turkish Sultan was entering Bagdad 
as a conqueror at the head of wild Asiatic troops, without harm 
done to a house or human being. ■ Some thousands of Christian 
slaves were released, and Charles was extolled as a Crusader and 
knight-errant of chivalry. The attack on Algiers, in which the 
duke of Alva, and Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, took part, 
ended in a disgraceful failure.* In 1536 another war arose 
between Charles and Francis, when the French king renewed his 
claim on Milan, on the death of its duke Sforza, who ruled for the 
emperor. Charles invaded Provence without success, and Francis 
overran Savoy and Piedmont, while his fleet, in conjunction with 
that of Barbarossa the corsair, sacked and burned Nizza (Nice). 

* Details may be sought in Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole's charming work The 
Barbary Corsairs {Story of the Nations series). 



408 A History of the World 

In 1552 the emperor, at war with Henry II. of France, on account 
of the French king's seizure of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, as above 
related, lost many thousands of men in his unsuccessful siege of 
Metz. Three years later Charles V., worn out by his life's labours 
in the cabinet and field, resigned the crown of Spain and her 
colonies, with Naples, Milan, Franche-Comte (a part of Burgundy), 
and the Netherlands, to his son Philip, and in January, 1556, his 
final abdication left the empire to his brother Ferdinand I., already 
chosen as successor by the electoral princes, along with the hereditary 
lands of the Hapsburg house. Two years later the ex-emperor 
died at the monastery of San Yuste (St. Just) in Spain. The 
history of his rule in Germany had been that of a man who was 
rather politic than fanatical. In struggling with the Reformation, 
he had seemed not to be resisting religious freedom absolutely and 
in itself. He had Protestant allies against the Protestant League, 
and on one occasion Cardinal Farnese left the imperial camp in 
disgust because the service of the conventicle was performed beside 
the sacrifice of the mass. Charles, in Germany, was reduced to 
concessions and compromises. But elsewhere — in the Netherlands, 
in Italy, and above all, in Spain — he avenged himself for this 
extorted hypocrisy, and rigorously applied the principle of unity and 
constraint in matters of faith. In May, 1558, he wrote from San 
Yuste to his daughter, then acting as Regent of Spain, on hearing 
that the doctrines of the Reformation had made their way into 
Andalusia and Castile, denouncing "so monstrous and insolent an 
abomination," and counselling its extirpation. A few days before 
his death, in a codicil to his will, he commanded his son, Philip II. 
of Spain, Naples, and the Netherlands, to pursue and chastise the 
heretics with the utmost severity and vigour ; to protect the holy 
office of the Inquisition ; and thus " to deserve that our Lord will 
ensure the prosperity of his reign." The entire history of the 
execrable bigot to whom these words were addressed shows that 
the extirpation of heresy, the maintenance of the unity of the faith, 
by fire and by the sword, were the rule of his policy in every part 
of his dominions. 

Chapter IV. — The Reformation {continued) ; the Catholic 

Reaction. 

In Switzerland the new doctrines were preached as early as 15 16 
by Ulrich Zwingli, born in 1484, in the canton of St. Gall. He was 
a man of enthusiasm for and learning in the Greek language, a 



The Reformation 409 

gifted preacher, a zealous patriot, and a very able politician. In 
15 1 8 he was chosen as preacher in the minster at Zurich, where 
the Reformation was formally adopted in 1523. The progress of 
the new opinions split the cantons into two hostile sections, and in 
1528 five Roman Catholic cantons formed an alliance to which the 
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, afterwards emperor, was admitted. 
In the war which ensued, in 1531 , the Catholics made a sudden attack 
on the men of Zurich, and Zwingli was left dead on the field. His 
position as a reformer was in advance of Luther's. He repudiated 
everything, not only in doctrine, but in the formal worship and 
constitution of the Church, which was not expressly enjoined in 
Scripture. He was so liberal, in those days, as to maintain the 
salvation of unbaptised infants and of such virtuous heathens as 
Socrates, Plato, Seneca, and others. The movement at Geneva is 
for ever associated with the name of the acute, logical, hard-headed, 
arbitrary, and somewhat hard-hearted Jean Calvin, born at Noyon 
in Picardy in 1509. In the history of the great religious revolution 
his name is only less illustrious than that of Luther. Calvin 
rendered to Protestantism the two great services of drawing up a 
system of doctrine in his famous Institutio, a masterpiece of lucid 
argument based on the Scriptures, and of organising its ecclesias- 
tical discipline. He was thus at once the great theologian of the 
reformers and the founder of a new Church polity ; and his com- 
mentaries on the Bible have given him a foremost place as an 
expositor. In the political view, Calvinism is closely associated 
with the cause of civil freedom. The great French feformer had 
to flee for his life from Paris in 1533, and to Switzerland three years 
later, arriving at Geneva in the autumn of 1536. The citizens had 
recently emancipated themselves from the Catholic duke of Savoy, 
and a Protestant Confession of Faith was now proclaimed. Calvin, 
after being expelled from the city by a party who disliked the strict 
new moral regime established by the reformers, was recalled in 
1541, and became a sort of autocrat in civil and religious affairs. 
A stain rests on his memory from the treatment accorded by the 
champions of freedom, as against the Roman See, to Servetus, a 
Spanish theologian who had put forth views which Calvin and his 
followers abhorred. He declared, in a private letter, that if Servetus 
ever came to Geneva, he should not be suffered to leave the place 
alive. The man was arrested on his way to Italy in 1553, and, 
after a trial lasting for two months, with intervals, he was burnt to 
death. Calvin vainly tried to have the mode of death alleviated, 



41 o A History of the World 

and that was the extent of his mercy towards one who dared to 
hold what he, in his view of the Scriptures, considered to be 
wrongful doctrine concerning the Trinity. The bigotry of some of 
the reformers has been already alluded to, and it is shameful to 
have to admit that such a man as Melanchthon saw nothing but 
cause for gratitude in the atrocity perpetrated at Geneva. The 
influence of Calvin was great in France during the religious wars, 
and his form of Christianity is still that which prevails in the 
Presbyterian Churches of the British Isles and the United States, 
and in many other bodies dissenting from the episcopal system. 

In England, the divorce of Henry VIII. from Katharine in 
I 533 vvas not the cause, but the mere occasion, of the rupture 
with Rome. As in Germany, the Reformation was due to forces 
long at work. In teaching and in practice alike, the Church 
was in need of drastic change, and men who never broke away 
from the Papal See, such as More and Colet, were far in advance 
of mediaeval traditions. The Pope had been regarded for centuries 
as a foreign prince whose claims were hostile to English interests, 
and, in the matter of the divorce, there were many besides 
Henry who believed Clement VII., as an Italian prince ruling 
the States of the Church, to be guided in his opposition rather 
by fear of Charles V., who was Katharine's nephew, than 
by any higher considerations. A series of statutes between 1532 
and 1535 made an end of Papal authority in England, the Act 
of Supremacy, in 1534, declaring the sovereign to be the only 
supreme head on earth of the Church of England, and bringing 
to the scaffold, as traitors who denied this view, the admirable 
More and the excellent Bishop Fisher of Rochester. The sup- 
pression of the monasteries, and the seizure of their landed and 
other possessions, which began in 1536, and was carried out 
under the direction of Henry's able and unscrupulous Protestant 
statesman Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, caused the serious 
rebellion of 1536, in the north of England, called the Pilgrimage 
of Grace, headed by a lawyer named Robert Aske. Many thousands 
of insurgents were in arms, and York, Hull, and Pontefract Castle 
were taken. The matter ended in the dispersal of the rebels 
on specious promises from the king's general, the duke of Norfolk, 
and the execution of Aske and some abbots. The northern folk 
were, in the main, strongly attached to the old faith, and the poor 
specially resented the destruction of the institutions which had 
been the chief almsgivers. At this time there were three chief 



The Reformation 411 

religious parties. There were those who, like More and Fisher, 
still regarded the Pope as head of the Church. The king's party, 
rejecting Papal authority, adhered to the old faith. The reforming 
party, utterly opposed to the Pope, rejected much of the doctrine 
and ritual of Rome. Henry, as is well known, lived and died 
a Catholic in all points save that of Papal supremacy. In 1520 
he had taken the field against Luther with his pen, and his work 
On the Seven Sacraments won from Leo the title of Fidei Defensor 
(Defender of the Faith), still marked by the letters F.D. on our 
coins. In 1536, under the influence of Thomas Cromwell, he made 
some concession to the reforming party by allowing a complete Eng- 
lish Bible, the translation of Tyndale and Coverdale, to be placed 
in the churches, but three years later the Act of Six Articles, called 
by the Protestants the " Whip with Six Strings," upheld some of the 
chief Catholic doctrines under severe penalties for denial. 

It was under Edward VI. (1547— 1553) that the faith of the 
Anglican Church was changed. The Statute of Six Articles was 
repealed, and the Liturgy was purged by Cranmer of what was 
conceived to be Popish error, in his compilation of the First 
and Second Books of Common Prayer. In 155 1 the 42 
Articles of Religion rejected all the Sacraments except Baptism 
and the Lord's Supper, and denied the " real presence " or transub- 
stantiation, with the rejection of a belief in purgatory and the 
practices of invocation of saints, prayers for the dead, and clerical 
celibacy. Insurrections in Norfolk and Devonshire were due partly 
to the religious changes and partly 10 the suffering caused by the 
inclosure of lands. Cranmer's lawless attempt to bring in a 
Protestant successor in the person of Lady Jane Grey utterly failed, 
and a reaction came under Mary Tudor (Mary I.) in 1553, the 
bigoted daughter of Henry and Katharine. Gardiner, bishop of 
Winchester and Lord Chancellor, a strong Catholic, and Bonner, 
bishop of London, conducted the persecution which lasted from 
1555 until Mary's death in 1558. This direful work, in which 
about 300 people of all ranks, including some women and 
children, perished by fire, was of vast service to the Protestant 
cause. Setting aside Cranmer, who was only a " martyr " after he 
had renounced his Protestantism, and who only recanted back again 
when he found that, in any case, he was doomed to die, it seems 
certain that the deaths of Bishops Hooper, Ridley, and Latimer, 
and their fellow-victims, aroused an indignation which made many 
conform to the new system. 



412 A History of the World 

The final settlement came under Elizabeth (1558-1603), the 
great queen who, though she was, by inheritance, .a Tudor tyrant, 
was very prudent and patriotic withal, yielding to her people's wishes 
when they were strongly expressed in Parliament, preserving peace 
almost throughout her reign, save when war was forced on her 
by Spain, and thus enabling the nation to recover from the troubles 
of the past, and to develop manufacturing industry and commerce. 
It is probable that she was only a political Protestant. The Anglican 
Church, a compromise between Rome and Geneva, was established 
with the sovereign as its visible head, and into this groove 
Elizabeth strove to force all her subjects by an Act of Uniformity 
and by a Court of High Commission for the suppression of heresy 
and schism. Catholics on the one hand, and the Protestant 
dissenters from the Church on the other, the people known as 
Puritans because they claimed to- be purer in faith and ritual than 
those who had accepted the Church-pattern, were alike persecuted, 
and in 1563 the 39 Articles, mainly the same as the 42 of 
Edward VI., stated the views of the Anglican Church. Protestantism 
may be held to have received its final sanction in England in the 
appearance, under James I., of the new and noble translation of 
the Bible called the Authorised Version (161 1), after a vain attempt 
to reconcile the Puritan and Episcopalian parties at the Hampton 
Court Conference of 1604. We may note that when Elizabeth 
came to the throne, half her subjects, as good authorities hold, were 
still Roman Catholics in belief. If this were so, the larger part of 
that half simply drifted into Protestantism under influences of 
various kinds in the course of the reign. The Puritans, we may 
observe, chiefly inspired from Geneva and by Calvin, were obnoxious 
to Elizabeth partly because she saw in them the supporters of a 
larger political freedom than that which she was disposed to accord. 
She managed the conflicting parties with great skill, and at her 
death the severance from Rome was almost universally accepted. 
The Protestant revolution in England, only confirmed by the Papal 
hostility shown in bulls of excommunication and deposition, and 
by the issue of the conflict with the hated Philip of Spain, was of 
great importance to the cause of the Reformation in other countries. 

In Scotland, the death of James IV. at Flodden, in 15 13, left an 
infant king as successor, and an anarchical condition of affairs 
ensued in the earlier years of James V. (15 13-1542), under the 
regencies of the duke of Albany and the earl of Angus, amid the 
incessant feuds of the two great factions of nobles, the Hamiltons 



The Reformation 413 

and the Douglases. Angus, himself a Douglas, as " guardian " of 
the king, treated him as a prisoner and a mere tool of his ambition 
until the king, in 1528, at 15 years of age, made his escape and 
assumed regal power. Angus fled to England, with the forfeiture- 
of his estates, and the king chose his chief ministers from among 
great ecclesiastics. The nobles, in their jealousy, then began to 
lean towards the reformed doctrines, aiding the elements of religious 
change which in Scotland, as elsewhere, had long been working. 
The clergy were disliked and despised by the people, and in 1525 
an Act was passed forbidding the importation of Lutheran books, 
and the spread of his "damnable " opinions. The spirit of bigotry 
and persecution soon led the Scottish Church-authorities further, 
and in 1528 Patrick Hamilton, an abbot who had received his 
Protestant teaching from Luther's lips, died by burning at St. 
Andrews. The lower orders, of the clergy, including some of the 
preaching friars, favoured the new doctrines. James V., a man 
of vigorous rule who sternly checked the turbulence of chiefs on 
the Borders and in the western Highlands, supported the persecution 
of " heretics." The old alliance with Prance was renewed in 1537 
by the .king's marriage with a daughter of Francis I., and, on her 
early death, with Mary of Lorraine, better known as Mary of Guise, 
daughter of the powerful French duke 1 of Guise. The power of 
the Crown in Scotland was increased at this time by an Act revoking 
all grants made to nobles during the- king's minority, and another 
statute annexed the Hebrides, .and the Orkney and Shetland Isles, 
and seized many lordships for the sovereign. His death came in 
December, 1542, after the shameful rout of a Scottish army by a 
small English cavalry-force at Solway Moss, in the north of Cumber- 
land. His spirit was broken by the- disaster due to the misconduct, 
through hostility to their king, of Scottish nobles, and another long 
minority began when the crown was left to his daughter Mary Stuart, 
born in the palace of Linlithgow only seven days before her father 
expired. The regent was James Hamilton, earl of Arran, who was 
soon at war with Henry VIII., when the strong national feeling 
forced him to decline a contract of marriage between the little 
queen and Prince Edward of England. In 1544 and 1545 English 
forces invaded the country by land and sea, partly destroying 
Edinburgh and Leith, and ravaging the south-east Lowlands with 
the utmost ferocity. The ripe crops were burned, with many towns, 
villages, and abbeys, these last including those of Melrose, Roxburgh, 
Dryburgh, and Kelso. In 1547, when Edward VI. was the boy- 



414 A History of the World 

king of England, the Protector Somerset severely defeated the Scots, 
under Arran, at the battle of Pinkie, near Musselburgh. The little 
queen Mary was then sent away for safety to France, betrothed to 
the king's eldest son, afterwards Francis II., and brought up, at 
a very vicious court, as a strict Catholic, facts which should be 
remembered in her favour when an estimate is made either of her 
character or of the difficulties of her position, at a later time, as 
a ruler of a "heretical" nation. In 1554 Mary of Guise, Mary 
Stuart's mother, became regent, and her system of rule gave much 
offence to the body of the nation in assigning posts of honour and 
profit to her countrymen, and using French soldiers to garrison the 
fortresses. 

Turning again to the religious revolution that was pending, we 
find the influence of Calvin and Geneva strongly at work in the 
northern kingdom. Cardinal Beaton (or Bethune), archbishop of 
St. Andrews, was a stern opponent of the reformers. This able 
man, partly educated at Paris University, and formerly " resident " 
for Scotland at the French court, and special ambassador to France 
for James V., had obtained from the Pope (Paul III.) the appoint- 
ment of legate in Scotland, with supreme authority in all ecclesiastical 
affairs, and he soon caused the establishment of a " Court of 
Inquisition" to deal with heresy. In 1546, after hanging, drowning, 
or banishing various offenders, Beaton and other prelates, looking 
out from a window of the castle of St. Andrews, witnessed the 
burning of George Wishart, a man who had been accused of heresy 
in 1538 for teaching the Greek New Testament, as a schoolmaster 
in Montrose, and had then retired to the Continent, where he 
associated with reformers in Germany and Switzerland. In 1543 he 
was a professor at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he 
had as one of his students a youth named Tylney, who describes 
him as a tall, black-haired, long-bearded, comely personage, of 
melancholy cast of features, courteous, lowly, glad to teach, desirous 
to learn. He then went back to Scotland, and became an 
enthusiastic and eloquent preacher of the doctrine of justification 
by faith as opposed to the Catholic insistence on the efficacy of 
good works. Beaton's treatment of Wishart soon brought his own 
death. The Cardinal was not only haughty, cruel, and intolerant, 
but of very licentious character. When Wishart was burned, there 
were many who said that they would not suffer innocent men to 
be slain. A plot against him was formed, and in May, 1546, a 
few weeks after Wishart's martyrdom, a party of men murdered 



The Reformation 415 

him at his castle of St. Andrews. The ablest champion of the 
Roman religious system in Scotland was dead. The 16 conspirators 
who slew Beaton, joined by above 100 men, held out against the 
regent, in the castle of St. Andrews, for more than 1 2 months, when 
they were forced to surrender by the arrival and attack of some 
French war-galleys, on board which they were conveyed to France, 
where the leaders were imprisoned or sent to slavery at the galley- 
oars. The religious struggle in Scotland went on, and in 1550 
Adam Wallace, a humble layman from Ayrshire, was burned for 
heresy. 

Five years later the hour and the man for Scotland had arrived, 
and the work of Hamilton and Wishart was taken up by Calvin's 
greatest follower, John Knox. This illustrious man was born near 
Haddington in 1505. He was educated at Glasgow University, 
where he became expert in Latin and logic. Of his life for 18 years 
after he left the university we know nothing more than that he was 
ordained priest, and that in 1544 he was acting as tutor in some 
Scottish families where the Reformation doctrines were well regarded. 
He fell in with George Wishart, and his future course was soon 
decided. With all the intensity and self-devotion of his character, 
with what is called " fanaticism," which was, in Knox, combined 
with very shrewd sense, ready wit, and native humour, he became 
the apostle of the Reformation in Scotland. He moulded the 
future not only of Scotland, but of England, and, through England, 
of the large part of the world now ruled by natives or descendants 
of natives of the British Isles. It was no mere change of dogmas 
which was effected by Knox. The national life, spiritual and 
intellectual, was transformed and quickened. His work brought the 
triumph of principles which were to act upon all coming generations, 
in the very country, at the very time, wnen the victory was essential 
to the real progress of mankind. If the Reformation had failed 
in Scotland; if Mary Stuart had found the country, when she 
assumed power, united in the Catholic faith, she would have com- 
manded the destinies of England. The great English queen would 
have been thwarted in her efforts for a religious settlement, and 
Protestantism would have been paralysed in the country whose 
moral and material support of the new system enabled that system 
to hold its ground against the assault of the united strength of 
Catholicism. 

When Wishart was seized by the emissaries of Cardinal Beaton, 
Knox was wishful to follow his friend to the last, but Wishari, 



4i 6 A History of the World 

knowing what lay before him, cried, "Return to your bairns" 
(meaning Knox's pupils), " and God bless you. One is sufficient 
for one sacrifice." In 1547 Knox and his pupils were forced, for 
their safety, to take refuge in St. Andrews Castle, and, being 
formally called to the ministry, he preached there and in the parish- 
church. When the place surrendered, Knox became a captive for 
18 months, first as a galley-slave on the Loire, and then in prison 
at Rouen. With health impaired for life by his sufferings, the Scot- 
tish reformer was freed in 1549, on the application of Edward VI. 
of England, and in that young monarch's country he made his 
home for the next four years, becoming a royal chaplain, and 
having an important influence on the composition of the Church 
Articles. When Mary Tudor came to the throne, Knox, with other 
leading Protestants, fled to the Continent, and in 1554 he was 
at Geneva. In September of the following year he returned to 
Scotland, and zealously preached against the mass, with the support 
of some leading nobles. The persecution of heresy was still in 
vogue, and Knox returned to Geneva, being burnt in effigy by the 
zealous bishops, at the cross of Edinburgh, when he failed to appear 
at their citation. Many Scottish nobles, with an eye, in some cases 
at least, to Church-property, banded themselves together on behalf 
of the Reformation, and in December, 1557, the bond called the 
First Covenant united them as men sworn to advance the cause, 
in maintaining " God's true congregation, and renouncing the 
congregation of Satan." The Protestant nobles hence became 
known as "the Lords of the Congregation." In May, 1559, Knox 
landed at Leith, and resumed his preaching at Dundee, Perth, and 
St. Andrews. The efforts of the queen-regent (Mary of Guise) 
and the bishops to repress the now irresistible movement were 
met by popular tumults, censured by Knox and other leaders, in 
which monasteries were sacked, " images " in churches destroyed, 
and altars defaced. The Lords of the Congregation were too 
influential for the regent, and sent manifestoes to her, one of 
them addressed " To the generation of Antichrist, the pestilent 
prelates and their shavelings within Scotland." The help of 
England was sought against the French troops, and Elizabeth, in 
January, 1560, sent a fleet and army to the Forth, to capture Leith 
after six months' siege, during which the queen-regent died. The 
French troops, under treaty, quitted the country, and at this crisis, 
in 1 56 1, Mary Stuart, now widow of Francis II. of France, returned 
to Scotland and assumed her position as queen in her 19th year. 



The Reformation 417 

We need not do more than allude to the chief events in the 
career of this charming personage, a woman of great abilities and 
little principle. She was between two parties, the Catholics, headed 
by the earl of Huntly, and the reformers, led by John Knox, who 
was a thorough politician, and by her half-brother James Stuart, 
afterwards earl of Moray (Murray). Her fatal mistake was her 
marriage, for his handsome face, with the vicious fool, her cousin, 
the Catholic Lord Darnley. Hence came the murders of Rizzio 
and Darnley ; the rebellion of Mary's subjects ; the abdication in 
1567; the defeat of Langside, and the flight to England in 1568, 
with the fatal scene at Fotheringhay 19 years later. These matters 
are too familiar to need further account here. 

It was in August, 1560, that Protestantism was formally 
established by Parliament as the national religion of Scotland, on 
the basis of a Confession of Faith, mainly drawn up by Knox. The 
new Scottish Church was organised by him as a Presbyterian and 
democratic body, the episcopalian rule of the Roman Cnurch being 
exchanged for that of Church-courts in every parish, composed of 
the minister and lay-elders, with representative presbyteries in every 
group of parishes, and a representative General Assembly for the 
whole country. Knox, then minister of St. Giles' Church in 
Edinburgh, had no part in the revolt. He retained his influence 
until his death in 1572. His great successor, Andrew Melville, 
born in 1545, and a student at St. Andrews and Paris, was a fine 
" Humanist," or scholar in the new Greek learning, who became a 
professor of classics at the Academy of Geneva. On returning to 
Scotland in 1574 he became principal of Glasgow University, and 
then of St. Andrews, rendering great service to the cause of 
Scottish learning, and having a great share in drawing up the great 
document of Presbyterian polity known as the Second Book of 
Discipline. His bold opposition to attempts at restoring episcopacy 
caused his withdrawal for a time to England, and in 1605, when 
James was king of England, Melville was imprisoned in the Tower 
for five years for his invectives against the archbishop of Canterbury 
(Bancroft) on account of his encouragement of " Popery." In 1580 
episcopacy was abolished in Scotland by an Act, and the Covenant, 
revised in 158 r, became the standard of orthodoxy, being signed by 
James VI. and his council. Eleven years later the Presbyterian 
system was fully established in its present form. James, with 
additional power derived from his kingship in England, set up 
episcopacy, with many sees, in 16 io, allowing bishops to preside 



41 8 A History of the World 

at Presbyterian synods, and depriving ministers and " elders " of 
their powers of •discipline. An attempt to force some of the 
practices of the Anglican Church on the Scottish people was made 
in 1618 in the Five Articles of Perth. Further proceedings in the 
way of persecution will be seen hereafter. 

In Ireland, when the Act of Supremacy was passed, some abbeys 
were at once suppressed, and another Act, five years later, confiscated 
the property of some hundreds of religious houses. A vain attempt 
was made, under Henry VIII., to anglicise the Irish in language, 
dress, and manners, and to compel the sole use of the English (or 
Latin) language in the services of the Church. Under Henry's 
successors (save Mary), the English. government strove to force the 
Reformation on the Irish people, but they would have none of it. 
All classes, Irish and Anglo-Irish, closed their ranks. The destruction 
of venerated relics aroused general indignation. An attempt at 
English settlement was made under Mary by the seizure of lands 
which formed King's County (in compliment to Philip) and Queen's 
County. The history of the country under Elizabeth is one of 
horror and of shame for modern Englishmen. The Anglican 
Church-system was set up, like a foreign garrison, amongst people 
firmly cleaving to the old faith. Constant rebellion was met by 
stern repression in which the native Irish were treated as mere 
savages to be slain. In 1566 Sir Henry Sidney, a very able man, 
became lord-deputy, and found the country, in the south and 
west, terribly wasted by war. He exercised sway with the most 
ruthless vigour against the turbulent, burning villages, destroying 
the crops, driving off cattle, and blowing up castles, after hanging 
the garrisons in lines over the battlements. In 1579-80, when 
Lord Grey de Wilton was governor, new trouble came from foreign 
invasions. Sir James Fitzmaurice, under Papal sanction, landed 
at Smerwick, in County Kerry, and sought help in Connaught from 
the Desmond faction, but was killed by some of the Bourkes. 
Then some Spanish vessels, carrying 800 men, mostly Italians, 
escaped the English fleet, and landed in Kerry, also at Smerwick. 
Lord Grey arrived with troops including Walter Raleigh and 
Edmund Spenser, then both young men almost unknown to fame, 
.and, with the help of cannon from the fleet, he forced a surrender 
of the invaders. The men were butchered in cold blood, the few 
women and priests were hanged, and the officers were held to 
ransom. Two years later, in 1582, the head of the Fitzgeralds or 
Geraldines, the earl of Desmond, rose in Munster, and was slain, 



Ireland 419 

hunted down like a wild beast, after a great slaughter of his followers. 
In 1594 the famous Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, rose in Ulster. 
He had experience in war, and was more of an English politician 
and courtier than an Irish chieftain. This formidable rebel obtained 
arms and stores from Spain, and kept the field for eight years, 
winning great victories over the queen's troops, and rendering the 
absolute conquest of Ireland necessary. Elizabeth's favourite, the 
earl of Essex, went across the sea in 1599 and utterly failed. At 
last the right man was found in the cold, prudent, steady, solid 
Lord Mountjoy. This relentless conqueror called famine to his 
aid. Military posts were established at different points in the north, 
and the land between them was utterly wasted. The people died 
in tens of thousands, and the power of Tyrone faded away. At 
this time a large Spanish squadron, with 3,000 soldiers on board, 
came to Kinsale. Mountjoy, ever prompt and vigorous, hurried 
south with every man he could muster, routed Tyrone's force which 
followed him, and received the surrender of the Spaniards, who had 
been left by their own fleet, and were blockaded by English ships. 
The Spaniards were allowed to return to their country, and many 
Irish went with them. The earl of Tyrone submitted, receiving 
a full pardon for himself and his followers, and retaining his titles 
and lands, on abjuration of all alliances with foreign powers or 
with any enemies of the Crown. A few days later Elizabeth died, 
when her troops had, for the first time, effected the real subjugation 
of Ireland. 

Norway had fallen into a declining condition after the Union 
of Calmar in 1397. Spirit, enterprise, and intelligence seemed 
almost extinct ; her commerce had been absorbed by the powerful 
Hansa League ; and her old colonial possessions, the Orkneys and 
Shetlands, had passed from her to Scotland. In Denmark, which 
remained united with Norway, the people, under their olden right 
of election, chose as their king Christian of Oldenburg, in northern 
Germany, who was descended, in the female line, from the old 
royal family. The Oldenburg line, which continued unbroken until 
1863, was thus established in the person of Christian I. (1448-148 1), 
who was at the same time elected duke of Schleswig and Holstein. 
His death was followed by half a century of international struggles 
in Scandinavia. Christian II., a ferocious half-insane tyrant, who 
reigned from 1513 to 1531, became king of Sweden by conquest 
in 1520, and in the same year, with a view to his own safety, he 
perpetrated the atrocious massacre, at Stockholm, of 94 of the 



420 A History of the World 

foremost men of the country. A popular revolt drove him from 
Denmark to the Netherlands, and his uncle became king as 
Frederick I. This sovereign, reigning from 1523 to 1533, favoured 
the Reformation, and under his son, and, after a brief period of 
civil war, his successor Christian III. (1536-1559), the Lutheran 
form of Protestantism was fully established in Denmark and Norway, 
the latter country being now treated as a conquered province and 
forced to accept the reformed religion. We must now turn to the 
events which caused the final separation of Sweden from Denmark. 
In the history of patriotism, the name of Gustavus Vasa stands high. 
Born in 1496, of a noble house, he was treacherously carried off 
to Denmark in 15 18 by Christian II. and kept in confinement as 
a hostage. In a year's time he escaped, and wandered about in 
Sweden, at great risk, striving to stir up a spirit of resistance to 
the Danish oppressor. With a price set on his head, he made his 
way to Dalecarlia, in central Sweden, and worked on farms and in 
the mines. The massacre of 1520, or " Blood-bath " of Stockholm, 
followed by the slaughter, in the provinces, of about 500 leading 
patriots, was the signal for revolt. Gustavus, whose father was 
among the victims of the Danish king, led the hardy miners of 
Dalecarlia, and soon had a large force under his command. Fortress 
after fortress was captured by the patriots, and the fall of Stockholm 
in 1523 brought the final expulsion of the Danes and independence 
to Sweden. The Scandinavian union was thus ended, and Gustavus, 
chosen king of Sweden, with hereditary rights in his line, reigned 
until 1560 with excellent results to his country. Law and order 
were completely restored ; the Lutheran religious system was 
introduced ; the Lapps were converted to Christianity, and the 
Finns, for the first time, received religious instruction through parts 
of the Bible and hymn-books printed in their own tongue. Education 
and trade were promoted by the erection of schools and colleges, 
. the conclusion of commercial treaties, the establishment of fairs 
for merchants from abroad, and the making of roads, bridges, and 
canals. The only blot upon a rule always firm and, in case of need, 
severe, was the wholesale plunder of the Romish clergy, in the 
style of Henry of England. The Lutheran ministers, with very 
moderate stipends, were made dependent on the Crown. Financial 
reforms and renewed prosperity enabled this excellent king to leave 
Sweden, after his nearly 40 years of power, in possession of a well- 
trained army of 15,000 men, a powerful navy, and a full exchequer. 
Gustavus' eldest son, Eric, was deposed after eight years of foolish 



The Reformation 421 

and somewhat tyrannical rule. Two of his successors favoured the 
cause of Catholic reaction, but the people, resolutely Lutheran, 
deposed the latter of them (Sigismund) in 1600, and placed his 
uncle on the throne as Charles IX. His rule of n years was 
beneficial to Sweden, now assuming importance in European affairs. 
We shall see his son and successor, the greatest of Swedish sovereigns, 
at a later stage, and we need here only note further the acquirement 
by Sweden, after a war with Denmark in 1643-1645, of the southern 
part of the country or Scania, and of the Baltic islands Gottland 
and Oesel. 

I In summing up the Protestant gains of the Reformation, we 
fir\d that, soon after the middle of the 16th century, or in 50 years 
from Luther's burning of Leo's " bull " before the Elster Gate of 
Wittenberg, the new religion had triumphed decisively in northern 
Europe, among the nations of the Teutonic race. England, Scotland, 
Denmark, Sweden. Norway, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wiirtemberg, 
the Rhenish Palatinate, several Swiss cantons, the northern Nether- 
lands, were all Protestant. In this region of Europe, Ireland alone 
held firm, as she mainly does to this day, to the ancient faith. 
Italy and Spain were left, as they have remained, almost untouched 
by the religious revolt, along with much of southern and central 
Germany.! It remains to trace the course of events in France, 
where the'struggle between the two religions was for a time doubtful. 
The University and the Parliament of Paris strongly supported the 
Papal cause, the former having, in 15 21, issued a severe censure 
of Luther's views. Henry II. (1547— 1559) has been already seen 
in warfare with the emperor Charles V. The contest, continued 
against Philip II. of Spain, involved the complete defeat of the 
French by the Spaniards, in 1557, at the famous battle of St. Quentin, 
in the north of France, and was ended, two years later, by the 
Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, a town east of Cambray. Early in 
1558 the surprise of Calais by the French deprived England of the 
last remnant of the conquests made under Henry V. Henry II. 's 
wife, Catharine de' Medici, born in 15 19, of the famous Florentine 
family, was a notable woman, crafty, ambitious, thoroughly repre- 
sentative of an age of the vilest sensuality and the most subtle 
intrigue. Beautiful and witty, abounding in tact, she thus acquired 
the great influence wielded by her in the reigns of three successive 
kings, her sons. Francis II., first husband of Mary Stuart of 
Scotland, died in 1560. He was succeeded by his brother, 
Charles IX. (1560-15 74), a lad of ten years, entirely under his 
28 



422 A History of the World 

mother's control. The Guises were at this time enjoying great 
power, at first as rivals of Catharine, and then as her allies against 
other parties in the state. The chiefs of the house were Duke 
Francis of Guise, a military commander of courage and skill, the 
defender of Metz and captor of Calais ; a man of noble person and 
easy manners, frank in his dealings, a firm friend and a remorseless 
foe. His brother Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine, a quick, clever, 
licentious man, directed religious and financial affairs. Their chief 
rival was the " Constable," Anne de Montmorenci, a man of 
enormous wealth, and for many years a personage of great importance 
in France. He fought bravely in the Italian wars, and was created 
a field-marshal in 1522, in his 30th year. A playmate of Francis I. 
in his youth, he fought by his side on the fatal field of Pavia, 
and was his fellow-captive for a time at Madrid. Released by 
ransom, he rose to power through his exertions for the king's 
freedom, and in 1536, with masterly Fabian tactics, avoiding a 
battle in which defeat might have ruined the monarchy, he caused 
the retreat of Charles V. with his invading army. In 1538, ap- 
pointed " Constable," fifth of his family to attain that honour, he 
was the greatest subject of the Crown, austere in character, rough 
in demeanour, disliked at court, whence he was banished by 
Francis, for some unknown reason, in 1541. Restored to favour 
under Henry II., De Montmorenci, heading his own court-faction, 
was at constant issue with the Duke and the Cardinal. One of 
his chief claims to credit with posterity is his liberal employment 
of that great artistic genius Bernard Palissy " the Potter." In 1557 
the Constable was taken prisoner by the Spaniards near St. Quentin, 
but he returned to Paris on parole in the following year, in order 
to defend his interests against the Guises. Protestantism, in the 
Calvinistic form, was at this time making much progress in France, 
in spite of severe persecution in the two last reigns. Known as 
Huguenots, a name said to be a Geneva nickname for the German 
Eidgenosse, or " confederates," the Calvinists included many persons 
of rank and of the middle classes, and were headed by the taciturn 
and stubborn Admiral Coligny, and his brothers, D'Andelot and 
Chatillon, nephews of the Constable, all three men who sacrificed 
to their religion worldly power and profit. Anton de Bourbon, 
king of Navarre, and his brother Louis, prince de Conde, were on 
the same side, either on religious grounds or from jealousy of the 
influence of the Guises. 

It is impossible to give here details of the complicated intrigues 



The Huguenots 423 

of the time. Persecution of the Huguenots and political interests 
caused the outbreak of civil war in 1562. In December of that year 
a hard-fought battle at Dreux ended in the defeat of the Protestants 
under Coligny and Conde, with the capture of the latter on one side, 
and of Montmorenci on the other. In the -following February 
(1563) the duke of Guise, besieging the Huguenot headquarters 
in Orleans, defended by Coligny's brother D'Andelot, received a 
fatal wound. Anton de Bourbon had recently been killed at the 
siege of Rouen, leaving a young son, Henry of Navarre, born in 
1553 at Pau, in the province of Beam, on the French side of the 
Pyrenees, whence came his name of " le Bearnais." His father had 
changed sides, and died fighting for the Catholics, but his mother, 
Jeanne d'Albret, who held the Protestant opinions, trained her son 
in her own faith. On the death of Guise, the queen-mother, 
Catharine de' Medici, now virtually ruling the country, concluded 
with the Protestants the Peace of Amboise, with the purpose, as 
it seems, of vexing and depressing the Guises, who headed the 
Catholic cause. By this arrangement, which was merely a truce 
in an internecine contest, the Huguenots were to have the free 
exercise of their religion, except in certain districts and towns. 
Another change of policy caused Catharine to combine with Philip 
of Spain for the uprooting of heresy. The liberties of the Huguenots 
were then curtailed, and attempts were made upon the life of Conde 
and of Coligny. The war was resumed, and Paris was besieged 
by Conde, but he was defeated, in 1567, in a battle at St. Denis 
by Montmorenci, who there received a fatal wound. In March, 
1568, there was another "peace" made, but the persecution of 
Protestants continued, and some thousands perished by massacre 
or judicial execution. Aided by troops from Germany and stores 
from England, the Huguenots again took the field, only to be 
severely defeated, in 1569, at Jarnac, near Angouleme, with the 
death of Conde, and at Moncontour, between Tours and Poitiers, 
where they were led by Coligny. The gallant young Henry of 
Navarre, now in his 17th year, the hero whose white plume was 
ever seen waving in the thick of battle, had now, at his mother's 
instance, assumed a leading part in the Protestant cause, and had 
fought both at Jarnac and Moncontour. Coligny, again helped from 
England, Germany, and Switzerland, gained some successes over the 
royal (Catholic) forces, in the capture of Nimes, the relief of La 
Rochelle, a town ceded to the Huguenots, and a victory in the field. 
Catharine then again, in 1570, concluded a peace (St. Germain-en- 



424 A History of the World 

Laye), by which the Protestants were, with an amnesty for the past, 
to receive freedom of worship through all the country except in 
Paris, and a number of strong towns as security. 

This lull was only one preceding a storm in the perpetration 
of one of the worst crimes of all history. The treacherous and 
cruel Catharine, unable to crush her foes on the field of battle, 
devised an ambuscade. Human hearts were, to this wicked woman, 
only counters in a game of policy and crime, and she arranged a 
marriage, as if to bind a lasting peace, between Henry of Navarre 
and her beautiful daughter, Marguerite de Valois, sister of the king 
(Charles IX.). The celebration of the nuptials was the bait by 
which she drew the Huguenot leaders to Paris in August, 1572. 
Coligny received costly presents from Charles, and was made a 
councillor of state. Four days after the marriage, the brave 
Protestant, a model of virtue in a most vicious age, was wounded 
by a shot from the palace-window. The king, in real or pretended 
wrath, hastened to assure Coligny that he should be avenged, but 
on that very day, under his mother's influence, he came to believe 
that his life was aimed at by the wounded man, and, with a 
blasphemous oath, he ordered his slaughter and that of all his 
followers. Bands of armed citizens were prepared, and the signal 
for wholesale murder was given on the night of St. Bartholomew's 
Day, August 24th. The wounded Coligny was the first victim, and 
then, at midnight, the tolling of a bell in the palace-tower let loose 
the murderers on their prey. About 4,000 Huguenots were 
slaughtered in Paris, Henry of Navarre only escaping by attendance 
at mass. In the course of two months at least 30,000 more 
Protestants were slain in the provinces. The Pope (Gregory XIII.) 
showed his joy, as Vicar of Christ on earth, by proclaiming a year 
of jubilee, by the striking of a medal, by a procession to the church 
of St. Louis, and by the performance of a grand Te Deum. The 
court of Spain of course sent congratulations on this noble vindica- 
tion of Catholic principles. From the atrocious guilt of this deed 
no cavilling or sophistry, no pretences that the murdered Huguenots 
were mere political rebels, themselves planning the destruction of 
the monarchy, have ever been able to relieve its perpetrators or 
approvers. Writing in the year 1898, in a time when a criminal 
conspiracy of Christian powers, the hideous farce styled the 
" Concert of Europe," deliberately condones Armenian massacres, 
on a scale far vaster than that of St. Bartholomew's Day, in the 
fear of provoking a general war due to international jealousies on 



The Huguenots 425 

the endless " Eastern Question," it is well to take readers back to 
the days of Elizabeth, and witness how this enormous crime was 
regarded by an English queen and her subjects. When the 
ambassador of France, a few days after La St. Barthelemy, as the 
French call the massacre, presented himself at court, he had to 
make his way to the throne in the hall of reception between lines 
of courtiers and officials, all clad in the deepest mourning and 
regarding him with gloomy looks of aversion. The queen, in like 
attire, received him with the demeanour due to one who, personally 
guiltless, was the emissary and representative of a monarch whose 
recent crime had put its blackest blot on the page of modern 
history up to that date, and had consigned his own name to 
indelible infamy. 

The tragedy was perfectly useless as a means of overcoming 
the Protestants of France. After the first shock of horror, they 
seized their weapons, caused a royal army to waste away in a vain 
siege of La Rochelle, and in 1573 extorted another "peace" by 
which they obtained the free exercise of their religion in their 
strong places, Nimes, Montauban, and La Rochelle. In 1574, on 
the death of Charles IX., Henry III., another son of Catharine, 
came to the throne. He was a man of weak character, caring little 
for the religious question, and only anxious for a life of dissolute 
ease. His mother's baneful influence, however, caused him to 
attack the Huguenots again, and the fifth civil (religious) war of 
this period in France began. The Protestants had the best of the 
struggle, and in May, 1576, another "peace" gave them complete 
freedom of worship in all parts, and eight new " places of security " 
or strong towns. Henry, duke of Guise, then formed, in alliance 
with Philip of Spain, the Holy League, headed by the king, for the 
annihilation of the Protestant cause, but again, in 1577, another 
"peace" (Bergerac or Poitiers), after some fighting, was granted by 
Henry, in fear of increase of power for the Guises, and Catharine, 
for the same reason, made a private arrangement with Henry of 
Navarre. Once more, when the court violated the terms lately 
granted, arms were resumed, and the seventh war began in 
November, 1579. A year later another "peace" confirmed the 
previous treaties with the Huguenots, and for some years the 
country was at rest. 

Henry of Navarre had resumed the leadership of the Protestants, 
and the death of the king's brother, the duke of Anjou, in 1584, 
foreboding the extinction, in the male line, of the House of Valois, 



426 A History of the World 

gave the Bourbon prince the prospect of the throne. The Catholics, 
under Henry of Guise, then revived the League, and planned the 
exclusion of Henry of Navarre, and the transference of the crown, 
on the king's death, to his uncle Cardinal de Bourbon. This 
intrigue, and the revocation of the concessions to the Huguenots, 
at once caused the eighth civil war, known as the " War of the 
three Henries," of Valois (the king), of Navarre, and of Guise. The 
Protestant Henry gained a victory in 1587, but the Catholics had 
the best of the struggle in the end. Henry of Guise then plotted 
the deposition of the king, but died, by assassination at his order, 
at the castle of Blois in September, 1588. A year later Henry III., 
after a revolt of Paris and other great towns, and an alliance with 
Henry of Navarre against the Catholic rebels, was murdered in 
his camp at St. Cloud, before his capital, by the digger of Jacques 
Clement, a Dominican monk, and the House of Valois thus ended. 
The duke of Mayenne, brother of the murdered Henry of Guise, 
had now assumed the leadership of the Catholics. 

The House of Bourbon, which held the French throne until 
1792, and from 18:5 to 1830, now began to reign in the person of 
Henry IV., the rightful heir, by descent from Louis IX. The 
Catholics, however, set up a rival king, the old Cardinal de Bourbon. 
Catharine de' Medici had died early in 1589, and one source of 
trouble for the wasted and unhappy country was thus removed. 
Henry, fighting for his throne, gained important victories over 
Mayenne, in 1589 at Arques, near Dieppe, and in March, 1590, at 
Ivry. When he besieged Paris, he was driven off by the combined 
forces of Mayenne and of Philip II. 's great general, the duke of 
Parma. Three years later he sacrificed his religious faith to secure 
his crown, and, abjuring the reformed religion at St. Denis, was 
crowned at Chartres in 1594. He was then engaged, between 1595 
and 1598, in driving out Philip's troops from Brittany, Picardy, and 
Burgundy, as the Spanish sovereign claimed the French throne 
for his daughter by his third marriage with Elizabeth of Valois, 
sister of the late king (Henry III.). The civil wars of religion in 
France then came to an end with the Edict of Nantes, published 
in April, 1598, giving the Huguenots equal political rights with the 
Catholics, and freedom of religious worship, with restrictions thereof 
to nobles of a certain class, and to the citizens of certain cities and 
towns. It was prohibited in all episcopal cities, at the royal court, 
and in Paris and within a radius of 20 miles round the capital. 
Public offices were opened to Protestants, and they could have 



Henri Quatre and France 427 

seats in the four parliaments of Paris, Grenoble, Bordeaux, and 
Toulouse. Some fortified towns were assigned to them, and they 
became a kind of armed political party. The Treaty of Vervins 
made peace with Spain, and all Philip's conquests of territory were 
restored. 

It was the task of Henry IV. to restore prosperity to a country 
devastated and disordered by civil war, and to place on a firm basis 
the royal authority which had been greatly impaired. This work 
was effected, in the course of 12 years, in a manner which has 
made the memory of " Henri Quatre " still cherished by the French 
people. He quickly became the most popular of sovereigns, whose 
chief faults were a licentious life, and an extravagant expenditure 
on personal favourites and natural children, which set the worst 
example to society, and were productive of much evil in his own 
and succeeding reigns. In the great work of restoration Henry 
had the invaluable aid of his minister De Rosny, better known as 
the duke of Sully. This admirable man, harsh and ungracious, 
and proud enough of his own services, was a statesman of unbending 
principle and integrity, devoted to the welfare of his country and 
his king. Born in 1560, and placed in early youth under the care 
of Henry, he barely escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
At the Huguenot victory of Coutras, in 1587, he did excellent 
service in command of the artillery. At Ivry, receiving a severe 
wound, he had the glory of capturing the white standard of the 
duke of Mayenne. As the king's chief adviser, he approved Henry's 
" conversion " to the Catholic faith, in the interests of France. 
When he assumed power, the landed proprietors and provincial 
governors were severely controlled, and their tyrannical abuses of 
authority were stayed. Commerce was developed in the making 
of new roads and canals, and the financial administration was so 
vastly improved that, in the course of ten years, the national debt 
was reduced to less than one-sixth of its amount, and this in spite 
of the remission of arrears of taxation. The systematic plunder 
which had devoured half the sum raised by taxes on its road from 
the tax-payer to the treasury came to an end, and Sully, regardless 
of the clamour and hatred of thievish revenue-farmers and collectors, 
freely suspended or dismissed officials, and forced them to refund 
stolen sums. Between 1596 and 1609 tne revenue was more than 
doubled in amount, and the treasury, in the latter years, contained 
a large surplus ; the arsenals were prepared for war, and the fleet 
was well equipped. The reign ended on May 14th, 16 10, the day 



428 A History of the World 

after the coronation of Henry's second wife, Mary de' Medici. 
His life had been often attempted by assassins at the instance of 
the papal and imperial courts, where he was regarded as still the 
foe of Catholicism, and of the ruling houses of Austria and Spain. 
Henry was on the point of setting out for war in Germany when 
he was fatally stabbed, as he sat in his coach in a narrow street of 
Paris, by a fanatic named Ravaillac, who is alleged to have been 
a tool of the king's Jesuit enemies. 

Before the middle of the 16th century the supporters of the old 
religious system which had been so rudely shaken by Luther, Calvin, 
and their aiders and abettors, had become convinced that it was 
time to set their house in order. Self-reform and revival were the 
urgent needs of the Catholic Church, and the work was carried out 
with admirable vigour and ability. The Protestant revolt was met 
by a great outbreak of Catholic zeal. A reformation of discipline 
and morals took place in the south of Europe. All the institutions 
which had been devised for the propagation and defence of the 
faith were made to work with new efficiency. The old religious 
communities were remodelled, and new religious communities were 
founded. As early as 1524, Gian Pietro Caraffa, bishop of Chieti 
(anciently Theate), afterwards Paul IV., a man of the most ascetic 
rigour of life, helped to establish the new order of priests called 
Theatines, the chief object of which was to supply the deficiencies 
of the parochial clergy. The members of the new brotherhood 
were active and zealous in preaching to multitudes gathered in the 
streets and in the fields, and in visiting the sick. A new class of 
Popes succeeded to Leo, the lover of luxurious ease, literature, and 
art, and to his worldly predecessors who had cared far more for the 
aggrandisement of their own families than for the spiritual work 
of the Church. Paul III. (Alessandro Farnese) (1534-1549) was 
zealously active against the Reformation. It was he who opened 
the famous Council of Trent in 1545, a body which not only sharply 
defined the doctrines of the Church, and finally divided Christendom 
into the spiritual subjects and enemies of the Papacy, but effected 
a great reform of discipline, issuing a " decree of reformation of 
morals and government," dealing with the residence of bishops and 
parish-priests, the qualifications for the priesthood, and the erection 
of seminaries for clerical training. Other regulations were made for 
the lives of monks and nuns. Paul IV. (1555-1559) brought to the 
Papal chair the fervent spirit of Dunstan and Becket, vigorously 
directing the Inquisition against the spread of heresy ; setting up 



The Catholic Reaction 429 

the Index Expurgatorius, or catalogue of books the reading of which 
is prohibited to members of the Church on doctrinal, moral, or 
religious grounds ; and hunting up and burning heretical works. 
Pius IV. (1559— 1566) confirmed the decrees of the Council of 
Trent by a bull in 1563. Pius V. (1566-1572), beginning as a 
strict-living Dominican monk, and then becoming a rigorous In- 
quisitor-General, was an earnest reformer of morals and discipline, 
a terrible opponent of heretics in seizures of property, imprisonment, 
and burning, and a banisher of Jews. It was he who, in 1570, 
excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, absolving her subjects from 
allegiance, and cursing all who should acknowledge or obey her. 
Under his gorgeous vestments, this stern upholder of the authority 
of the Papal See, a man whose arrogant pretensions, like those of a 
new Hildebrand, offended some Catholic sovereigns, wore day and 
night the hair-shirt of a simple friar, walked barefoot in the streets 
at the head of processions, found time for private prayer amongst 
his most pressing avocations, and showed abundant personal humility, 
charity, and forgiveness of injuries. Gregory XIII. (157 2-1585), 
whom we have seen as the enthusiastic approver of the deed of 
St. Bartholomew's Day, encouraged plots against Elizabeth, the 
champion of Protestantism, and urged Philip of Spain to attack her. 
This head of the Church is more favourably known as the author 
of the reform of the Calendar in 1582. Sixtus V. (1585-1590) was 
a great ruler and statesman who, a swineherd in his early youth, 
became a Franciscan friar in 1534, and afterwards Inquisitor-General 
at Venice. In 1570 he was made a cardinal, and owed his election 
to the Papal chair, 15 years later, to the dissimulation with which he 
concealed his ambitious hopes and real vigour, and to the artful 
assumption of a pious, meek, and feeble old age. As Pope, he 
showed his ability and energy in the vigorous reform of civil and 
ecclesiastical abuses. The hordes of brigands were suppressed ; 
agriculture, trade, and industry flourished anew ; colleges were 
founded, and Rome was adorned with new buildings, including the 
present Vatican Library. In his foreign policy, he combated 
Protestantism by aiding Henry III. of France against the Huguenots, 
and Philip of Spain against England. 

It was the foundation of the Order of Jesuits which rendered 
the greatest service to the Catholic cause in the great reaction or 
anti-Reformation. The Society of Jesus is one of the most famous 
and powerful organisations in history. Ihigo Lopez de Recalde, 
known as Ignatius de Loyola, was born in 1491 at his ancestral 



430 A History of the World 

castle of Loyola, in the Basque province of Guipuscoa. His career 
as a brave and chivalrous young officer ended in his being crippled 
for life by a cannon-ball in defending Pampeluna against the 
French. As he lay upon his bed of sickness, the perusal of the 
Lives of the Saints gave a new turn to his thoughts and aspirations. 
He soon burned with a spiritual enthusiasm like that of St. Francis 
and St. Dominic. He became a pilgrim, barefooted and begging 
his way, in the service of the poor, and an earnest student, at the 
age of 33, of the learning neglected by him in his youthful days. 
After dwelling for a time in the Theatine convent at Venice, Loyola 
went to Paris, and, amid penances and vigils, and visions of holy 
things and personages, he formed the plan whose execution made 
him, in the great Catholic reaction, the Luther of the Catholic 
Church. In 1534, in conjunction with five friends, Le Fevre of 
Savoy ; Lainez, Francis Xavier, and Bobadilla, of Spain ; and 
Rodriguez, a Portuguese, he drew up the rules of an order whose 
motto was " Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," " To the greater glory 
of God." To the usual triple vow of all Catholic religious orders — 
chastity, poverty, and obedience — was added that by which members 
were bound to go as missionaries to any country in the world to 
which their steps might be directed by the Pope. A " bull " of 
Paul III. approved the scheme, and the Society of Jesus began 
to exist, and was soon well established in Italy, Germany, Portugal, 
and Spain. In France the Jesuit organisation had not so much 
success. In the Netherlands, after the death of Loyola in 1556, 
Lainez, the second " general " of the Order, opened a college at 
Louvain which afterwards became one of the greatest Jesuit semi- 
naries. In Protestant countries the Jesuits could, of course, only 
be missionaries, and they carried on their work under perilous 
circumstances. In England penal laws rendered them liable to 
death, but some members of the Order were always to be found 
lurking, in Elizabeth's reign, in various disguises and under false 
names, hidden away, in case of need, in the retreats called " priest- 
holes," still shown in ancient mansions in this country. Their 
zeal and devotion as preachers in foreign lands have never been 
surpassed. They were found in all the territories laid open to 
the European world by the discoveries of Columbus, on every shore 
to which enterprise and contempt of danger could lead mankind. 
In North America, a Jesuit first revealed the true course of the 
Mississippi ; from South America, Jesuits first brought to Europe 
the invaluable Peruvian bark which supplied quinine. The world 



The Catholic Reaction . 431 

was, in truth, their province — China and Japan, India and Tibet, 
Abyssinia, Kaffirland, the Guinea coast, Brazil, California, and 
Paraguay. Their fields of battle, in which, with consummate skill, 
they carried on the conflict against heresy, were the press, the 
pulpit, the confessional, and the school. Armed with all the 
skill and knowledge that could further their work, the Jesuits were 
great in science, learning, and literature, all employed in the service 
of the Church on whose behalf they defied all human laws and 
all penalties — racks and dungeons, gibbets and beheading-blocks. 
They aimed at the conquest of men's and women's feelings and 
opinions, and for this the Jesuit was admirably fitted by a training 
which showed a profound knowledge of the human heart, and 
a thorough understanding of the religious instincts and impulses 
of mankind. The preliminary exercises of the novitiate were 
designed by Loyola to make the young Jesuit personally holy, and 
at the school and college he was moulded for social requirements 
as a teacher and a spiritual director of mankind. The full-blown 
Jesuit thus " became all things to all men" — and women. In matters 
of conscience, he could be strict or indulgent at need, delighting 
the truly devout with the most saintly morality, and soothing the 
gay cavalier or the frail beauty with excuses for the " irregularities 
of people of fashion," in the style of an easy well-bred man of 
the world. He was at work in many great political affairs, plotting 
against the thrones and lives of apostate sovereigns, spreading evil 
rumours, raising tumults, exciting civil wars, and, in some cases, 
arming the hand of the assassin. Vehement, politic, strict in 
discipline, fearlessly courageous, self-denying, indifferent to private 
feeling, unscrupulous, versatile, intensely and stubbornly devoted 
to a single end, inflexible in nothing but in fidelity to the Church, 
the Jesuits dealt, according to the hearer, in the most opposite 
political doctrines. The subject of an absolute Catholic king 
would be taught that the ruler had a right to do as he pleased. 
The subject of a Protestant sovereign would be assured that 
any man had a right to rebel against or to slay a bad ruler. 

It may well be imagined what enormous power was wielded 
by such a body of men. The history of the Order of Jesus 
is, in fact, the history of the great Catholic reaction. While the 
Protestant reformation was proceeding at one end of Europe, 
the Catholic revival was going on with equal rapidity at the 
other. The Catholics, moreover, had a great advantage in zeal, 
in unity, in consistency of tactics. Talents, virtues, follies, crimes, 



432 A History of the World 

were displayed on both sides, but steady, persevering work for the 
one great aim was far more prevalent among the Catholics. Success 
had made the Protestants lax, lukewarm, and worldly. Elizabeth, 
James I. of England, and Henry IV. of France had no such hearty 
feeling, in the Protestant cause, as that which animated Philip and 
other Catholic sovereigns. The Protestants quarrelled with each 
other. Calvinists persecuted Lutherans, and Lutherans harassed 
Calvinists. In England the prisons were filled with Puritans, all 
intense Protestants, because they would not conform to the Anglican 
Church. Meanwhile, the Catholics, with their operations taking 
in the whole world, with excellent organisation of forces, and 
complete unity among themselves, directed their whole zeal against 
Protestants of every Church and every sect. The result was that, 
whereas in the later years of the 16th century there was a great 
doubtful region where victory was in the balance between the two 
faiths, as in France, southern Germany, Belgium, Hungary, and 
Poland, all those countries — France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, 
Austria, Poland, and Hungary— half a century later, had been 
secured for Catholicism, and the Protestants have never regained 
what was then lost. 



Chapter V. — Spain and the Netherlands ; the Armada. 

We turn to a brief narrative of the rise of the noble, great little 
republic, the Seven United Provinces which formed Holland. 
Nothing less than great — heroically, morally, intellectually great — 
can that state be called which, having as her only basis, apart from 
the indomitable spirit and energy of her people, the precarious 
tenure of a land maintained only at vast expense, by barriers of 
timber and stone, against the destructive inroads of the raging sea 
— a mere reclaimed delta of mud, sand, and marsh — won her 
freedom, in a contest of 80 years' duration, from the most powerful 
empire in the world ; which founded a great commerce and colonial 
dominion ; which produced a succession of citizens eminent as 
soldiers, diplomatists, statesmen, scholars, philosophers, and artists ; 
and still, among the minor kingdoms of Europe, after the lapse of 
three centuries, commands the esteem of the civilised world as the 
model of a well-ordered and prosperous community. Holland was 
gained by her people, field by field, town by town, in a struggle 
against the best European troops of the time, commanded by the 
most skilful generals, and backed by what seemed to be boundless 



Spain and the Netherlands 433 

resources. Their implacable foe, the king of Spain, represented 
the despotism of his age in claiming entire authority over the lives 
and fortunes of his subjects, and absolute control over their con- 
sciences. The tenacity and resolution of the Hollanders resisted 
and defeated the maintainer of pretensions so monstrous, and thus 
gave the first precedent for civil and religious liberty. Their example 
was never forgotten. The prosperity of free Holland was a spur to 
the efforts of other parties and nations striving for freedom. It 
stirred the Huguenots, who finally failed. It animated the Protestant 
states of Germany in a contest of 30 years, the result of which was 
freedom for many of the new faith. It encouraged Englishmen in 
their successful struggle against the Stuarts, and the success of the 
Dutch revolt was assuredly in the minds of those who headed the 
cause of Britain's American colonies. The victory of Holland 
over tyranny was, in a sense, the beginning of modern political 
science and civilisation, in its demolition of the claims of divine 
right for kings, and of divine authority for an Italian priest, the two 
worst enemies of human progress. The Dutch first established the 
two great principles of civil government in free countries : that the 
sovereign is the servant of the state, and that the priest has no 
control except over those who yield to him a voluntary obedience. 
The little state which had, in a desperate and successful struggle, 
to the full as heroic as that of Athens against Persia in ancient 
days, vindicated once and for ever the true principles of liberty, 
was also a pioneer or aider of civilisation in improved agriculture ; 
in discovery and navigation ; in commerce ; in international juris- 
prudence ; in the extensive use of the art of printing; in scholarship, 
physical research, rational medicine, finance, and philosophy. 

In 1494 Philip, son of Maximilian I. (emperor) and Mary of 
Burgundy, became sovereign, at 17 years'of age, of the 17 provinces 
making up the Netherlands, now Belgium and Holland. From 
him the rule of this prosperous territory passed, through Charles V., 
to Philip II. of Spain. Antwerp, in succession to Bruges, was the 
richest town in the north of Europe, trading with all commercial 
countries, her river, the Scheldt, being often crowded with vessels 
so that successive fleets had long to wait before they could approach 
the busy quays for discharge. The mariners of Zealand, in Scottish 
waters, carried on a very profitable herring-fishery. The people of 
the northern provinces had supplied the boldest and most skilful 
sailors in the world for the naval warfare of Charles the emperor. 
Literature and the arts had made great progress, architecture being 



434 A History of the World 

specially prominent in the cathedrals and town-halls which still 
delight the tourist with their beauty of design and execution. The 
craftsmen of the Netherlands were expert in the woven work of 
wool and flax, in painting on glass, polishing diamonds, the making 
of tapestry and lace. To the inventive genius of Netherlanders 
was due the highest skill in the playing of bells in belfries, the 
carillons which still, from the fair aerial towers of Bruges and 
Antwerp, charm the ear as with a song of angels singing carols in 
the sky. Such were the people over whom Philip II. of Spain, in 
1555, was called to reign. His father Charles, born in Flanders, 
and always far more of a Fleming than a Spaniard, had not been 
sparing in exactions of money from his subjects in the Netherlands. 
When the doctrines of the Reformation, in the Calvinistic, democratic 
form, hostile to the theory of the divine right of kings, made way 
in the country, he severely persecuted the heretics. When the men 
of Ghent, in support of the privilege by which grants of money 
could only be made with the unanimous consent of the Estates, 
broke into revolt against the ruler's arbitrary demand for a large 
sum, Charles annulled all the charters, privileges, and laws of the 
city, and confiscated the whole property of the guilds and corpora- 
tions. A still larger subsidy was exacted than that which had been 
demanded and refused ; an annual fine of 6,000 florins was im- 
posed ; and the famous " Bell Roland," whose tolling summoned 
the burghers to meet in council, was taken down. After destroying 
the constitution, heavily fining all the citizens, and executing many, 
the emperor had graciously forgiven rebellious Ghent, because he 
was born there. Such were the doings of the father in the Nether- 
lands, when resistance was made to tyranny. The whips with which 
he had chastised opponents were now to be exchanged for the 
scorpions of his son. 

The territorial dominion of Philip II., in Spain, Italy, America, 
and the Eastern seas, has been already indicated. His resources 
included the products of India and the Spice Islands, and the gold 
and silver of the Western world. His revenue has been fairly 
estimated at ten times that yielded by England to Elizabeth. His 
army was the best in the world for discipline and training ; his navy 
was large and efficient. No modern sovereign, except Philip, has 
been at once supreme both on land and on sea. In character 
Philip II. of Spain enjoys the distinction of being, to all men and 
women who are lovers of goodness and freedom, one of the most 
detestable human beings that ever existed. This slight, lean, some- 



Spain and the Netherlands 435 

what short, weak-legged, narrow-chested man was a strong contrast, 
in person and attainments, to his energetic and accomplished father,' 
an excellent linguist, skilled both in military and political affairs. 
Charles was talkative ; Philip was silent. Charles could laugh right 
heartily on occasion ; the sullen Philip, shy of the public gaze, 
could scarcely smile. If his eye ever lighted up with a gleam of 
satisfaction, it was when he sat on his chair of state, surrounded 
by his courtiers, and saw heretics, in their horribly grotesque garb 
of yellow frieze, painted with flames and figures of devils, and with 
pointed caps, burnt to death at an auto da fe. This monster was 
a thorough Spaniard, knowing little of Italian or French ; finding 
pleasure in Spain and Spaniards only ; having no manners, tastes, 
or ideas that were not Spanish. His character is, in some aspects, 
not less mysterious than repulsive. He was possessed by a spirit 
of conscientious duplicity. His morality was utterly false and 
perverted. Sincere in his religious faith, and utterly devoted to 
the interests of his Church, he forgot every other duty. His public 
and private life abounded in cruelty, deceit, forgeries, assassinations, 
adulteries, ingratitude, selfishness, vindictiveness, and other kinds 
of atrocity and vice. Throughout all, he showed a frightful serenity 
of mind, under the conviction, as it seems, that his religion permitted 
and pardoned everything, provided everything were sacrificed to 
his religion. As a ruler of his vast dominions, it must be admitted 
that Philip possessed some important qualifications for a very 
difficult task. Laborious, persevering, firm, sagacious, skilful in 
the use of men, and in dispensing with those who had served him 
best, he was free from the ardour, impetuosity, and intemperate 
activity and ambition, which draw men into dangerous enterprises. 
Devoted to work, he could not bear movement. He sat in his 
closet, weaving webs of policy, slow and secret ; he lived at once 
in pomp and in silence, in business and in repose, in government 
and in solitude. It is supremely satisfactory to the British historian 
who is a lover of the freedom won by our forefathers to record 
the utter failure of all the schemes of this sinister personage. As 
the husband of Mary Tudor, as the suitor and then the assailant 
of Elizabeth, he failed to win England. After 40 years of sway 
which, in Spain at least, was without contention and without control, 
he lost the Netherlands. In France, after fomenting the two curses 
of religious persecution and of civil war, after supporting the Guises 
and the League in their most factious plots, he was forced to see 
Henry of Navarre put forth the Edict of Nantes, the stamp and 



436 A History of the World 

seal of his defeat, the repudiation of his maxims, the ruin of his 
pretensions. His plots with Mary Stuart ended in her death upon 
a scaffold. His coasts in Spain were ravaged by English cruisers, 
and Cadiz was taken and pillaged by English troops. A few days 
after signing the peace of Vervins with Henry IV. and Elizabeth, 
Philip of Spain died, with his inherited possessions diminished, his 
political and religious aims frustrated, his pride humbled, and the 
Spanish monarchy enfeebled and depressed. 

The great antagonist of Philip in the Netherlands was William, 
prince of Orange, one of the noblest characters in history. His 
title came from a small territory in the south-east of France, near 
Avignon, where his family had once been vassals of the Pope. After 
migrating to the Netherlands, members of the House of Orange 
had filled high offices under the Burgundian rulers. In 1555, 
when Philip became ruler of the Netherlands, the prince was 
22 years of age, head of a very wealthy house, still a Catholic in 
religion, and commanding in chief, on the French frontier, against 
Coligny and other Huguenot nobles. Styled " William the Silent " 
from his caution and prudence in diplomacy, he was to win in 
Holland the glorious and lasting title of " Father William," as the 
political creator of a free country. He soon embraced the Protestant 
religion, and showed himself far in advance of the ideas of his time, 
even among men of the most enlightened views then known, in 
desiring to tolerate all forms of worship. Philip, during his four 
years' stay in the Netherlands, clearly showed the intention of 
violating his oath to maintain all the privileges and liberties of the 
country. Spaniards were employed to carry on the government, 
contrary to the advice of his father, who had recommended the use 
of Netherlanders. An army of Spaniards and Germans was held 
in readiness on the frontier. With his usual cunning, when he 
desired to obtain large subsidies from the States, he revoked some 
of the edicts against heretics. He had, meanwhile, obtained from 
the Pope the right of appointing all clergy, knowing that the bishops 
were mostly men of moderate character, unfitted for his tyrannical 
purposes. The national militia was broken up into small parties 
and scattered over the country. When he was about to leave the 
Netherlands for Spain in 1559, he caused his creature, Granvella, 
bishop of Arras, to make a specious address to the assembly of the 
States, assuring them of his attachment to the people of the 
Netherlands, and appointing as their ruler Margaret, duchess of 
Parma, a natural daughter of Charles V., aided by a council which 



Spain and the Netherlands 437 

included Granvella and William of Orange. The deputies, secretly 
prompted by William, who had divined Philip's plans, made a reply 
requesting a diminution of taxes, and the withdrawal of foreign 
troops, and foreign officials. Philip was startled into a brief show 
of anger, but soon resumed his mask and promised compliance. 
The king had already seen who was to be his chief opponent in 
the coming struggle, and when he was embarking at Flushing for 
Spain, attended to the shore by William, as governor of Zealand, 
he took him aside and accused him of thwarting his plans. The 
prince declared that the States had acted for themselves, but Philip, 
for once natural, and not a hypocrite, grasped his wrist in a rage, 
and shaking it, cried, " JVo los Estados, ma vos, vos, vos ! " ("Not 
the Estates, but you, you, you ! "), employing the pronoun addressed 
in Spanish to menials. The two men thus parted to meet no 
more. 

The details of the struggle which ensued should be read in 
Motley's admirable Rise of the Dutch Republic. The conduct of 
the prince of Orange throughout was that of a man who placed his 
wealth, his life, his time at the service of his country. Ever vigilant, 
never despairing in the darkest hour ; thwarted at times, and even 
calumniated, by those whom he was striving to save ; he presents a 
spectacle of patient heroism, of calm resolution, of skill in diplomacy 
and statecraft, never surpassed in history. He gave Philip good 
reason for the hatred which could only be appeased by the shedding 
of blood. He had paid spies in the royal cabinet at Madrid, and 
was thus enabled, at many a crisis, to anticipate his adversary's 
moves, and to checkmate him in his country's interest. Margaret 
of Parma was regent from 1560 to 1567, chiefly aided by the proud, 
envious, insolent, immoral, supple, eloquent Cardinal Granvella, 
until his recall in 1564; by Viglius, a pedantic, narrow-minded 
lawyer ; and by the Count de Berlaimont, a stern, intolerant 
courtier, the enemy of his country's liberties. The persecution of 
heretics was carried on under the new king-named bishops, and 
Philip ordered the full execution of the edicts against heresy, and 
the proclamation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. On the 
popular side, at this time, Counts Egmont and Horn were William's 
chief allies ; but they were far from being his equals in under- 
standing, for their own safety, the character of the tyrant at work 
in Spain. The persecution drove thousands of Flemings to 
England, taking with them their weaving skill and industry, the 
foundation of flourishing manufactures in the eastern counties. 
29 



438 A History of the World 

In 1565 the prince of Orange, Egmont, Horn, and other patriotic 
noblemen virtually withdrew from all share in the government. A 
hotter persecution began, conducted by inquisitors, and frightful 
scenes of cruelty and disorder occurred. The hour of revolt was 
now at hand. In April, 1566, after the formation of a confederacy 
among the patriot nobles, now including, as prominent men, 
William's brother, Louis of Nassau, a brave, impetuous man, and 
a strong Protestant ; De Brederode, marquis of Utrecht ; and 
Philip van Marnix, lord of St. Aldegonde, a deputation of some 
hundreds of the chief men of the country walked in procession 
to the palace, and had an interview with Margaret on the subject 
of the persecution. Many of the nobles were at this time greatly 
impoverished by extravagant living, and De Berlaimont, standing 
at the regent's side, was overheard to say that "she had nothing 
to fear from such a band of beggars " (fas de gueux). On the next 
day this sneer had results. De Brederode gave a grand banquet to 
his associates at the Hotel de Culemburg, a mansion in Brussels, 
and the remark was referred to. The confederates then adopted, 
for the patriots, the name of " Gueux," drank a toast to cries of 
" Long live the Beggars ! " and the host, sending for a beggar's 
wallet, slung it round his shoulders and passed it on. William of 
Orange, Egmont, and Horn came in, on hearing the noise, and 
were forced, by friendly urgency, to join in the demonstration. 
The banded patriots then took to wearing grey cloaks like those of 
mendicants, and the name " Gueux " was henceforth applied, in the 
Netherlands, to all those who supported the Reformation and were 
the foes of tyranny. The reformed religion was now making rapid 
progress, the Calvinists being prominent in the eastern provinces, 
and the Lutherans, who were by far the most numerous and 
wealthy, in the south. All were united in hatred to Popery, the 
Inquisition, and Spain, and the rallying-point of all the Protestants 
was Antwerp. 

At this time, an outburst of bigotry on the part of the Protestants 
unhappily gave Philip some excuse for a further exercise of tyranny. 
Not only did heretical " field-preachings " disturb the public peace, 
but the rioters known as Iconoclasts attacked the churches in 
several provinces, especially in Flanders and Brabant, breaking 
what they held to be idolatrous " images," plundering and ruining 
the interior of the splendid cathedral at Antwerp ; doing like 
damage at Tournai, Ghent, Mechlin, Valenciennes, and several 
other towns ; and pillaging in all over 400 Catholic places of worship. 



Spain and the Netherlands 439 

Philip resolved on vengeance. He had already refused to allow 
the States to meet for the discussion of grievances, and he supplied 
the duchess of Parma with funds to raise a large force of horse and 
foot. Many of the Catholic nobles withdrew from the patriotic 
league. Open hostilities broke out, and Valenciennes, held by the 
Calvinists, was taken, after a bombardment, by Noircarmes, the 
governor of Hainault. The position of the country was such that 
William of Orange went into exile for a time, after vainly warning 
his friend Egmont to care for his own safety. William was aware 
of what Philip contemplated, and withdrew in order to plan for 
his country's freedom. The terrible duke of Alva, a relentless 
Catholic fanatic, an able general, and an everlasting type of cruel 
tyranny, arrived at Brussels in August, 1567, at the nead of a 
veteran Spanish army of 15,000 men, "and assumed the government 
of the Netherlands in place of Margaret. The absolute destruction 
of all heretics had been decreed, and Alva established what he 
called the Council of Troubles, styled by the patriots and known 
in history as the Council -of Blood. The Inquisition was re-estab- 
lished, and the work began. The new Council paid no respect to 
any existing contracts or privileges, and its judgments were without 
appeal. Counts Egmont and Horn were beheaded in Brussels. 
Hanging, decapitation, quartering, and burning of human beings 
were in full swing, with enormous confiscations of property. Count- 
less refugees fled to England, and were welcomed by Elizabeth 
who was glad for her realm to benefit by their skill in manufactures. 
The country, in some parts, was lapsing into a state of brigandage. 
William, collecting troops in Germany with money raised by the 
sale of his own property, by the help of his relatives, and by the 
subscriptions of refugee Hollanders and Flemings, took the field. 
In the spring of 1568 the Netherlands were invaded at four points. 
In May a division of the royal forces was defeated by the patriots 
at Heiligerlee, in the north-east of Holland, with the loss to the 
cause of freedom of one of William's brothers, Adolphus of Nassau. 
In July Alva in person routed his foe, with the loss of all their 
cannon and baggage, under Louis of Nassau, at Jemminghem, near 
Emden. William, heading an army of 30,000 men, could not bring 
the wary Alva to a battle, and in October the great patriot was forced 
to disband his men from sheer lack of funds. He retired to France 
for a time, and Alva, in the insolence of success, razed to the 
ground the Culemburg mansion at Brussels where the banquet of 
the Gueux had taken place, and set up, in the new strong citadel 



440 A History of the World 

of Antwerp, his own statue in brass, made from the guns taken at 
Jemminghem. The patriots, unable to do anything on land, were 
developing a naval force in privateers swarming forth from every 
port in Holland and Zealand, and cutting off Spanish ships convey- 
ing army-stores and the goods of commerce. The atrocious Alva, 
whose truthful boast it was that, in a rule_ of six years, he caused 
18,000 people of the Netherlands to die by the hands of his 
executioners, was now wearying out Philip, when it was found that 
all his murders and plunderings did not subdue the spirit of 
resistance. In the darkest hour of the country's fortunes, a gleam 
of success for the patriotic cause came, in April, 1572, with the 
capture of the town of Brill (Briel), on an island at the mouth 
of the Maas, by the fierce sea-rover William de la Marck. The 
people of Holland and Zealand rose in revolt, and William again 
appeared in the field, and took many towns in the south of the 
country, aided by his brother Louis. Alva would not meet him in 
battle, but attacked the northern towns captured by the Hollanders. 
The famous siege of Haarlem continued for seven months of 
1572—15 73, costing the Spaniards 10,000 men before they could 
succeed. The women had fought like tigresses on the ramparts, 
facing the long pikes of the enemy, flinging boiling oil and tarred 
hoops set alight, and using dagger and pistol in defence of their 
lives and their honour. The governor, chief officers, and 2,000 of 
the garrison were murdered on surrender. On the other hand, 
the enemy were repulsed with great loss by the citizens of Alkmaar, 
and the Spanish fleet was nearly destroyed in a fight on the Zuyder 
Zee. In 1573 Alva was recalled, and his successor, Requesens, 
a man of mild character, removed Alva's statue and suppressed his 
famous Council. 

The struggle continued, with alternations of success. An offer 
of a general amnesty was rejected with disdain by men who had 
resolved on freedom or death. In 1574 a large Spanish fleet, 
gathered for the relief of Middelburg, in Walcheren, was utterly 
defeated by Louis Boisot, admiral of Zealand, and that important 
city, after two years' siege, surrendered to the patriots. William 
of Orange, and his brothers Louis and Henry, were again in arms, 
but in April, at the battle of Mookerheyde, on the Maas, the great 
leader's two brothers were defeated and slain. The renowned 
and successful defence of Leyden followed. Force and famine 
were used in vain against the noble citizens, and in October, 1574, 
the place was delivered by William's desperate measure in cutting 



Spain and the Netherlands 441 

the dykes, flooding the country with the waters of tne sea, and 
thus bringing up boats with provisions for the starving people. 
1,000 Spaniards were drowned before they could withdraw along 
their embankments. At all points of the heroic struggle William 
was present, in person or in spirit, by speech or by letter, with 
prudent counsel, vigilant care, indomitable courage, and unfailing 
resolution. The sudden death of Requesens in March, 1576, 
brought a lull, during which the government was in the hands 
of a council of state, including many Flemish Catholic nobles. 
Then came horrors due to the rage of the Spanish troops in lack 
of pay. Alost was stormed, and the country around was put under 
tribute. Maestricht was sacked, with every circumstance of atrocity 
befalling property and person ; and in November the awful event 
known as "The Spanish Fury," or the " Sack of Antwerp," ruined the 
great commercial town of northern Europe. For three days the 
place was in possession of mere fiends filled with the spirit of greed, 
murder, and lust, while fire destroyed the town-hall and hundreds 
of the better houses, and thousands of the citizens perished by 
the sword. 

In November, 1576, the famous Pacification of Ghent was drawn 
up and issued. This treaty was a bond of union between the 
northern provinces, especially Holland and Zealand, and the 
" Estates " or representative-bodies of Brabant, Flanders, Hainault, 
and other territories in the southern Netherlands. The people were 
thereby pledged, without regard to religious differences, to drive the 
Spanish troops from the country. Its importance consists in its 
practical defiance of Philip by the bold assertion of popular rights 
in the suspension of the edicts against heresy, and the annulling 
of all sentences passed by Alva's council. Requesens was succeeded 
by Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles V., and so a half- 
brother of Philip. He was the naval victor over the Turks at 
Lepanto, as will be seen, in 157 1. William and the States-General 
had gathered a large army at Wavre, with some help in money from 
Elizabeth of England, in order to enforce the terms of the Pacifi- 
cation of Ghent. The Spanish troops were withdrawn, and the 
citadels which they had occupied were garrisoned by native soldiers. 
In September, 1577, "William of Orange entered Brussels in triumph, 
and was named Governor ("Ruward" or " Protector") of Brabant, 
by the revival of an old office, invested with almost absolute power. 
All seemed to be going well, when some of the nobles of Flanders 
and Brabant combined against him, and offered the government, 



442 A History of the World 

in the name of Philip, to the young Archduke Mathias of Austria, 
who came to the country. William managed to checkmate his 
opponents by accepting Mathias on terms which made him a mere 
puppet, while real power lay in the council of state and the States- 
General, and with himself as administrative ruler. A new actor 
now appeared on the scene in succession to Don John, who died 
in 1578. This was Alessandro Farnese, prince of Parma, son of 
Margaret, the former regent. He was one of the most skilful 
generals of modern times, an able statesman, a thorough Spaniard 
in his training and character. In January, 1578, with a large force 
of Italian, Spanish, and French troops, he utterly defeated the 
patriot army at Gembloux, near Wavre. Mathias retired from 
office, and Parma captured Louvain and other towns. Amsterdam 
now declared openly for the cause of freedom, and the States- 
General, with some help from Elizabeth, obtained a fresh army of 
Germans and English volunteers. 

At this crisis the southern provinces, containing the Walloon, 
French-speaking people, mainly Catholics in religion, began to 
fall away from the common cause, and William adopted a new 
course. In January, 1579, looking to the north alone, he formed 
the Union of Utrecht, whereby the provinces of Holland, Zealand, 
Utrecht, Gueldres (Gelderland), and Groningen, afterwards joined 
by Friesland and Overyssel, became the real basis of the republic 
of Holland or the " Seven United Provinces." The omission of 
Philip's name from this document made it a practical renunciation 
of allegiance to Spain. Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ypres soon 
afterwards joined the union. Then came the siege of Maestricht, 
taken by Parma in June, 1579, and given up to a three days' 
massacre and sack. An attempt at reconciliation, in a congress 
at Cologne, was frustrated by Philip's obstinate refusal to allow 
Protestant worship, and William of Orange then took a decisive 
step. Early in 1580 a States-General met at Antwerp, and the 
United Provinces were declared to be a free and independent 
state. Thus Holland entered the states-system of Europe. The 
hatred of Philip towards William had now reached the highest 
point, and he covered his name with infamy by issuing his edict 
of proscription, full of the foulest and falsest charges, calling on 
all persons to assail him " in his fortune, person, and life, as an 
enemy to human nature." The sum of 25,000 golden crowns was 
promised to whosoever should deliver up William of Nassau, dead 
or alive, with a patent of nobility to the successful assailant. 



Spain and the Netherlands 443 

William replied by his famous " Apology," published all over 
Europe, one of the noblest monuments of history, in which every 
false charge of the tyrant is refuted, and a crushing recrimination 
is made. William thus stood forth at the tribunal of the public 
opinion of the civilised world, as the accuser of a king who 
was a disgrace to his lineage, to his country, to civilisation, to 
Christianity, to humanity itself. The war continued under the 
prince of Parma, who was in power from 1578 to 1592. 

It was in March, 1582, that Philip's premium on the murder 
of a man whom he could neither bribe, nor cajole, nor catch, nor 
conquer had its primary effect in the first attempt on the life 
of William. He was at Antwerp, leaving the dining-room after 
a party to some of his kindred, when a young man advanced from 
among the servants and offered him a petition. He took it, and 
was at once wounded by a pistol-shot fired close to his head, 
the ball passing under the right ear, through the mouth, and out 
at the left jaw. The assassin was promptly killed by the attendants. 
The wounded patriot recovered in three months from his terrible 
injury. The papers found on the man's body proved him to be 
a Spaniard named Juan Jaureguy, in the employ of Anastro, 
a Spanish merchant of Antwerp. He had been hired by this 
man, who was on the verge of bankruptcy, to do the deed, with 
the connivance of a Dominican friar. Anastro had engaged with 
Philip to murder Orange, and to receive 80,000 ducats and the 
Cross of Santiago as his reward. He got away safely to the prince 
of Parma's camp. The bargain made with the king of Spain was 
signed in Philip's hand and sealed with his seal. Anastro's cashier, 
Venero, and the friar, Zimmermann, were arrested, and after con- 
fessing their share in the crime, and due trial, were executed. 
Parma, believing his enemy to be mortally wounded, sent circular 
letters to the revolted cities, calling on them to return to their 
allegiance to their forgiving sovereign, and to the holy Inquisition. 
The United Provinces, troubled by the loss of Bruges and other 
towns through treason, offered the sovereignty to William of Orange. 
He went to Delft to be inaugurated, and there, on July 10th, 1584, 
he was fatally wounded in his left side by three balls from a huge 
pistol. On this occasion also he had just risen from table, and fell 
at the side of his wife, Louisa de Coligny, daughter of the man who 
died in the " St. Bartholomew." William expired in a few minutes. 
The murderer, Balthasar Gerard, whose parents were both living in 
Burgundy, was a desperate and fanatical Catholic who had for years 



444 A History of the World 

cherished the design of slaying William. He had purchased his 
weapon with alms received from the victim, to whom he had 
presented himself as " Francis Guion," a Calvinist, and the son of 
a martyred Calvinist. He nearly made his escape in the confusion, 
but was caught through stumbling at the edge of the town -moat, on 
the other side of which a horse was ready for him to mount. After 
two days' severe torturing, Gerard was executed. The murderer's 
parents were ennobled and enriched by Philip, and, with a malignity 
worthy of the man, the pension which they received was secured 
upon the estate of the murdered patriot's eldest son, who had been 
carried off as a hostage to Spain. The best epitaph of William of 
Orange consists in Motley's words : " He went through life bearing 
the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling 
face. ... As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole 
brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the 
streets." 

The death of a patriot is not always fat il to the cause which he 
supports. The prince of Parma, who was privy to the foul deed, 
was alive, and strong in military force, but he could not undo the 
victim's work. That work was taken up- by his second son, Prince 
Maurice of Nassau, now 18 years old, and the spirit of freedom, 
after the first shock, rose higher than ever. In August, 1585, after 
a famous siege of 14 months' duration, Antwerp succumbed to the 
genius and determination of Parma and his engineers. A little help 
was rendered to the patriots by Elizabeth, who sent over some troops 
under the incompetent and lukewarm earl of Leicester, and brave, 
good Sir Philip Sidney died in 1586 in a skirmish at Zutphen. In 
the south, Ghent and other towns were taken by Parma ; the 
reformed religion was abolished ; Brussels and Mechlin, weary of 
resistance, submitted. In 1585 the power of Spain was again 
established in most of the country now called Belgium, and it 
became the " Spanish Netherlands." The state of this reconquered 
territory was fearful. Most of the people in the towns had perished 
by war, pestilence, and famine. Much of the once fertile country 
was given up to wolves and wild dogs. The fields had become 
wildernesses; the very roads were overgrown with vegetation. 
People of rank were begging their bread in the streets. From this 
spectacle, from these ghastly results of bigotry and tyranny, we turn 
with relief to the Seven United Provinces of the north, in their 
courage, energy, and hard-won freedom, still to be maintained, with 
a few thousand troops, commanded by a lad, against Parma, the 



Spain and the Netherlands 445 

skilful and victorious veteran, having 80,000 men at his command. 
Prince Maurice was named Stadtholder, captain-general, and 
admiral of Holland and Zealand. The civil government of the 
new state was committed to the able and virtuous Jan van Olden 
Barneveldt. The share of Holland against the Armada will be seen 
hereafter. There was a lull in the land-warfare at this time, but in 
1 59 1 Maurice took Breda by surprise, and Parma, now duke, by 
his mother's death, went to France to oppose Henry of Navarre. 
During his absence more fortresses were taken by the Dutch, and 
even- after his return Zutphen, Deventer, and Nimeguen were 
captured. The most formidable military foe of Holland disappeared 
with the death of the duke of Parma, from disease, at the end of 
1592. Albert of Austria, archduke and nephew of Philip, became 
governor in the southern Netherlands in 1596. In the previous 
year Maurice had taken Groningen, and in 1597, after defeating 
Albert's forces, he captured more towns. In 1599 the Archduke 
married Philip's daughter Isabella, and the southern provinces 
became an independent sovereignty under the husband and wife, 
known as " the Archdukes." Philip II. of Spain had died in 
September, 1598, and all Dutch patriots were breathing more freely 
for the removal of that deadly and relentless foe of civil and religious 
freedom. 

Dutch prosperity and power grew apace. The ships of Holland 
were doing the chief carrying-trade of Europe. Her " India 
Company" was formed in 1596. The Jews driven from Spain and 
Portugal found a refuge in the new republic. Tillage and manu- 
factures began to thrive again ; skill, industry, and courage were 
reaping their reward ; and all things gave token of the arrival of 
a happier age. The new king of Spain, Philip III., son of the 
late monarch, was his very opposite in regard to the business of 
government. Philip II. had striven to do everything : his son and 
successor would do nothing, and left all to his minister the duke 
of Lerma. Spanish pride and bigotry could not, however, even 
now formally relinquish what had been a prey, and the Archduke 
Albert continued the struggle in the Netherlands. In 1600 Maurice 
gained the decisive battle of Nieuport over Albert, striving to raise 
the Dutchman's siege of the town, and a great moral effect was 
produced. The famous Spinola, of Genoa, one of the greatest 
military captains of the age, was summoned by Albert to the com- 
mand, and the siege of Ostend, one of the longest of modern times, 
took the attention of Europe from 1601 to 1604. The operations 



446 A History of the World 

were a sort of school of war, especially in engineering, to military 
visitors from all parts of Europe, and mining and bombardment 
reduced the place to ruins before it was surrendered to Albert's 
forces. Maurice and Spinola manoeuvred in the field with indecisive 
results. At sea, the Dutch defeated the Spanish fleet off Dover, 
in 1606 Spanish ships were victorious off Cape St. Vincent, and 
again, in 1607, the Dutch fleet had a brilliant success in Gibraltar 
Bay. Spain was growing weary of the war. Her resources were 
becoming exhausted, and, in spite of the opposition, in a conference 
at the Hague, of the ambitious Prince Maurice and a war-party, 
against Barneveldt and those who wished for peace, a truce was 
made between Spain and Holland in 1609, couched in vague terms, 
to save Spanish pride, as regarded independence for the Seven 
Provinces. 

Peace continued for the space of 12 years, and the troubles of 
Holland were only internal, but these were of a character disgraceful 
to a free Protestant state. The curse of the time was religious bigotry, 
and Prince Maurice used it for his own ambitious ends. Away 
from the field of war, this son of the great William of Orange was 
a vulgar character — rough, cruel, and despotic. The object of 
his hatred was the excellent and patriotic Barneveldt, the greatest 
man ever produced by Holland, except only William of Orange, 
and his descendant, William III. of England. At this time, all 
reasonable men in the country were deafened and disgusted by 
the loud, angry theological disputes between the Calvinists, led 
by Francis Gomar, a professor of theology at the new University 
of Leyden, founded in honour of the grand defence of the town 
against the Spaniards, and his colleague Arminius. The national 
energies were turned from the noble objects of consolidating civil 
and religious freedom into the barren field of metaphysical theology. 
Barneveldt supported Arminius ; Prince Maurice, for his own ends, 
sided with Gomar. Arminius was mild, courteous, and pure in 
life. Gomar was learned, violent, and rigid, a bad copy of his 
master Calvin. Arminius, after triumphing over his opponent in 
disputations held before the States-General, died in 1609. Serious 
riots occurred in several towns, and the religious rivalry became a 
public nuisance and peril. Our own pedantic sovereign, James I., 
plunged into the controversy as a stout " Gomarist," while all men 
of sound judgment and the favourers of religious toleration were 
laughing at both sides. The Catholics of Europe were, of course, 
delighted at the scenes exhibited in this Protestant bear-garden of 



Spain and the Netherlands 447 

angry bigots. Barneveldt, meanwhile, as civil administrator and 
diplomatist, rendered good service by obtaining from England the 
restoration of the two important towns of Brill and Flushing, held 
as security for Holland's debt incurred to the niggardly and cautious 
Elizabeth when she furnished funds for the maintenance of the 
struggle against Philip. About one-third of the money due was 
paid to James for a receipt in full. After this great service, some 
of Barneveldt's ungrateful countrymen began to accuse him of 
treacherous views in the interest of Spain, and Prince Maurice, 
now aiming at sovereignty, and knowing that Barneveldt was the 
main obstacle to his projects, plotted the great statesman's ruin. 
His influence gained complete success for the Calvinist party, and 
the Arminians were persecuted with many outrages. Against this 
treatment Barneveldt vainly appealed to the prince, and the magis- 
trates of some towns, at Barneveldt's suggestion, called out the 
national militia to maintain the public peace. Civil war was in 
prospect, when in 16 17 Prince Maurice took a violent course in 
•seizing Brill, and declaring that Barneveldt meant to deliver the 
town to the Spaniards. This calumny was widely believed, and 
Barneveldt only consented to retain office at the entreaty of the 
States-General, and issued a dignified " Apology," addressed to the 
States, or assembly, of the province of Holland. Maurice, who 
had now become prince of Orange by his elder brother's death, 
arrested Barneveldt, treading public justice under foot, and acting 
with despotic power. The Synod of Dort met in November, 1618, 
and closed in May, 1619, after an absurd display of theological 
mysticism, and of conduct disgraceful to religion. Proscription, 
banishment, and execution of theological opponents (Arminians) 
followed, and even the Calvinists of France, Germany, and Geneva 
were shocked. The fate of Barneveldt was now sealed. After a 
mock-trial before a packed body of 24 prejudiced judges, accused 
and convicted of treason against the public liberties which he had 
passed his noble life in vindicating, Olden Barneveldt died by 
beheading in May, 1619. No fouler judicial murder stains the 
annals of any country. It stamped an indelible mark on the 
memory of Prince Maurice, and has left Barneveldt enshrined as 
one of the purest and greatest of patriots. 

In 1 62 1 the 12 years' truce expired, and Maurice and Spinola 
again faced each other in the field two years later. The Dutch 
people, weakened by their dissensions, cooled in their hatred of 
Spain, and with an army unused to war, were by no means eager 



448 A History of the World 

for a renewal of conflict. Maurice was growing old, and the financial 
condition of the country was unsound. The prince was becoming 
hateful in his despotism. The two sons of Barneveldt laid a plot 
against his life, having been deprived of their offices, and reduced 
to destitution and despair. The matter was betrayed, and one son 
escaped, the other was executed. In 1623 Spinola had begun the 
siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, the fortress commanding the navigation 
of the Maas and the coasts of the Zealand archipelago, and Maurice, 
rushing to its rescue, forced him away, after desperate efforts on 
both sides, with heavy loss. Frederick Henry of Nassau, Maurice's 
half-brother, marched into Brabant, and ravaged the country to the 
gates of Mechlin, Brussels, and Louvain, levying a heavy contribu- 
tion in money. By this time the Thirty Years' War was in progress 
in Germany, Holland aiding the Protestant cause with money. In 
1625 Prince Maurice died, and just before the end of his blighted 
life, he cried, in allusion to his victim Barneveldt, " As long as the 
old rascal was alive, we had counsels and money ; now we can find 
neither one nor the other." 

Frederick Henry of Nassau then assumed power as Stadtholder, 
and found matters in a bad condition. Discontent and disunion 
prevailed ; heavy taxes crushed the industries of the country ; the 
frontiers were almost defenceless ; and only in maritime affairs, in 
the East Indies, and, for some time, in the Western world, was the 
country flourishing. The new ruler, now in his 42nd year, showed 
his wisdom in a policy of religious tolerance and consideration, and 
the evil spirit of the past was by degrees exorcised. In 1626 some 
towns were taken from Spinola, and in the two following years 
Spanish treasure-fleets were plundered in the New World. The 
resources thus acquired enabled the republic to raise needful land- 
forces, and in 1629 Frederick Henry and other commanders defeated 
the enemy in the south, during Spinola's absence in Italy, at all 
points. Many towns of the Spanish Netherlands were taken, and 
Holland was freed from the danger of invasion. In 1632 almost 
all the fortresses on the Maas, including Maestricht, fell into the 
hands of the Dutch. In 1635 Richelieu, the French minister, made 
an offensive and defensive alliance with the republic. In concert 
with a French army, great success was won in the Spanish Nether- 
lands. After some changes of fortune Breda was retaken in 1637, 
and in 1639 tne famous Van Tromp gained a splendid victory in 
the Downs over the Spanish fleet, taking, sinking, or burning 50 
ships. In 1641 Charles I. of England gave his daughter Mary 



The Armada 449 

in marriage to Frederick's son William. The Stadtholdei had 
gained so much credit by his wise and energetic rule, that his office 
was made hereditary by the States-General, and the House of 
Orange was firmly established. In the civil war of England 
Frederick Henry aided the Royalist cause, but the people generally 
took part with the Parliamentarians, and remonstrated with their 
ruler. In 1647 he died, leaving a high character for integrity, 
prudence, toleration, and courage. It was his glory to leave com- 
pleted the task which his illustrious father had begun, and which 
the skill and courage of his half-brother Maurice had carried on. 
On January 30th, 1648, the Treacy of Munster between Spain and 
Holland renounced all Spanish claims, and fully recognised Dutch 
independence, after the lapse of 80 years from the first revolt. A 
more splendid triumph of the cause of freedom against enormous 
odds does not adorn the page of history. 

We turn now to our country's share in the great contest against 
Philip II. of Spain. British readers need no details of the Spanish 
Armada and its defeat. The victory, so glorious for England, was 
at once our Marathon and Salamis, the decisive event of a contest 
in which the future of the world was involved. It rendered possible 
the existence not only of the United States, but of great common- 
wealths beyond the Atlantic, and in Australasian seas, which are 
main portions of our vast empire. We need only note that the 
Dutch fleet played an important part in the preservation of our 
forefathers, blockading Parma in his harbours and preventing him 
from crossing to our shores while Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, the 
Catholic Lord Howard, and our other gallant countrymen, were 
battering the Spanish ships during their course up the Channel. 
With this grand event really begins our modern history. England 
therewith takes a new character and a new place in the world. 
The defeat of the Armada was the last act of a historical drama 
which had been played in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf 
of Mexico, where English adventurers, Drake and Hawkins and 
their compeers, had long been contesting the Spaniards' monopoly 
of the New World, harrying their commerce, attacking their sea- 
board towns, and capturing their great galleons laden with the 
riches of Mexican and Peruvian mines. A new race of Englishmen, 
formed by a maritime career, a race of sea-heroes not before 
existing in the British Isles, met and repulsed, in destructive and 
conquering strength, the attack of the Spanish masters of the New 
World. With Drake and Hawkins be^an the British love of 



450 A History of the World 

roaming the seas ; with Raleigh and Humphrey Gilbert arose the 
impulse and genius for colonisation. A new England, at once 
commercial and warlike, appears upon the stage of history, and 
henceforth we have the close connection between war and trade, 
during the two succeeding centuries, which has so largely affected 
the course of modern history. The motto " Trade follows the flag " 
was turned into action, commerce leading to war, and war fostering 
commerce. The mediaeval state of affairs in Europe came to an 
end. The industrial ages began, and the western European nations, 
France and England, entered into a contest for the possession of 
the vast regions beyond the Atlantic. 

Chapter VI. — The Thirty Years' War ; the First Stuarts. 

On the abdication of Charles V. his brother Ferdinand became 
emperor from 1556 to 1564, and was a mild and tolerant ruler. 
His son, Maximilian II. (1564-1576), an amiable man, well inclined 
to the Protestants, was unable to control the angry passions of the 
Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, who all combined in the 
political object of reducing the imperial authority, while they were 
hostile to each other on religious questions. The empeior, as head 
of the Catholics, became an accomplice or tool of the Jesuits, and, 
in the loss of one imperial privilege after another, he ceased to be 
a centre of governing power. Under his son Rudolf II. (1576-1612), 
a bigoted Catholic trained at the Spanish court, but an indolent, 
vacillating man, the Jesuits were very powerful, and the rival 
religious parties began to combine more closely against each other. 
The " Protestant Union," formed in [608, was responded to in the 
following year by the " Catholic League," and everything pointed 
to a renewal of armed conflict between the religions. The Protestant 
House of Brandenburg gained an accession of power, foreshadowing 
its future greatness, in the succession of the elector of Brandenburg 
to the duchy of Prussia. The emperor Mathias (1612-1619) 
irritated the Catholics by concessions to the Protestants, and yet 
was obliged to favour the Jesuits in their efforts to win back 
Germany to the Pope. The outbreak of the dreadful Thirty Years' 
War was made certain by the accession to power of Mathias' cousin, 
Ferdinand, who was emperor from 1619 to 1637. In 1618 the 
struggle had already begun in Bohemia through the tyranny 
exercised against the Protestants, under Ferdinand's influence, and 
his election as emperor in the following year drove that country 



The Thirty Years' War 451 

into open revolt. Complete religious freedom had been granted 
to the Bohemians by Rudolf, and they well knew what they had 
to expect under Ferdinand. He was a jealous, implacable bigot, 
skilful in policy, who aimed not only at crushing Protestantism in 
Germany, but at turning the German Empire into an Austrian 
military realm, in which the emperor should again have the Crown's 
full prerogative over all its vassals. Bohemia at once revolted, 
and chose as king the young elector of the Rhenish (or Lower) 
Palatinate, whose marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of James I. 
of England, in 161 3, afterwards brought the House of Hanover 
(Brunswick) to the British throne. This " winter-king," as he was 
styled from his brief tenure of power, lost his throne at once 
through the defeat of the Bohemian forces in the battle of Weissen- 
berg ("White Mountain") near Prague, in 1620, by Count Tilly, 
an able Catholic commander. He fled to the Hague, and was 
put to the ban of the empire, his Palatinate territories being held 
by Spanish troops under Spinola. Bohemia was thus brought to 
ruin. Many Protestant leaders were executed, lands were con- 
fiscated, the Protestant clergy were banished, and the Catholic 
worship was alone permitted. Learning and trade declined, and 
territorial and political influence passed into the hands of a new 
German and Catholic nobility. Thus ended the first phase of the 
war, in the utter failure of the Protestant movement in Bohemia.* 

The war was continued, on the part of the Protestants, by the 
brave, active, and skilful adventurer Count Ernest of Mansfeld, 
commanding a large army of mercenaries who supported themselves 
by the plunder of all occupied territories ; by Bethlen Gabor, prince 
of Transylvania ; by Christian of Brunswick ; and by other nobles 
heading troops who often had little regard for the religious interests 
involved, but were mere lovers of fighting and booty. After much 
manoeuvring and fighting in different regions of the hapless country, 
the Catholic army, under Tilly's leadership, had the better of the 
struggle. The Protestant Union was broken up in 1622, and two 
years later Catholic forces were alone in the field, and Ferdinand 
seemed to have attained his object. Other Protestant rulers than 
those of Germany viewed the position with alarm, and in 1625 
Christian IV. of Denmark plunged into the war, and enabled 
Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick to appear again in arms. 
Ferdinand, hitherto dependent almost solely on the forces of the 

* The details of the struggle should be sought in Mr. S. R. Gardiner's 
Thirty Years' War. 



452 A History of the World 

Catholic League, led by Tilly, now called to his aid the famous 
Albert von Wallenstein (or Waldstein), a wealthy noble, a man 
of extraordinary abilities and character, ambitious in the highest 
degree, adventurous, superstitious, a consummate strategist and 
tactician, one of the most remarkable of military and political 
adventurers. He raised a large army, to be supported, not by 
regular pay, which the- emperor could not possibly furnish, but by 
the plunder of territories conquered by its arms. Wallenstein, of 
an old Bohemian family, had been brought up as a Catholic, but 
he never had any definite faith, save in astrology, and in himself 
and his fortunes. In 1626 Wallenstein and Tilly had together 
about 70,000 men. In April the Bohemian noble severely defeated 
Mansfeld at the Bridge of Dessau, on the Elbe, south of Magdeburg, 
and in August Tilly, at the battle of Lutter, south-west of Brunswick, 
routed Christian of Denmark. In the same year Mansfeld and 
Christian of Brunswick died natural deaths. Holstein was conquered 
from Christian IV., its duke, in 1627, and the Protestant cause 
was in a desperate condition, when it was saved by the memorable 
and heroic defence of Stralsund, whose citizens resisted for ten 
weeks the utmost efforts of Wallenstein, and compelled him to 
retire with great loss. Peace was made in 1629 with Christian of 
Denmark, and thus ended the second, or Danish, period of this 
disastrous struggle. 

In the same year the bigoted Ferdinand did much harm by 
his Edict of Restitution. He had already made an end of Pro- 
testantism in Austria and Bohemia, and, holding himself, through 
recent successes, to be virtual master of all Germany, he now 
decreed the transference, to the Catholic clergy, of the lands of 
two archbishoprics, 12 bishoprics, and over 100 smaller church- 
benefices, which had come into Protestant hands since the Treaty 
of Passau. Only the adherents of the Augsburg Confession were 
to have free exercise of religion, and all other " sects " were to 
be abolished. The troops of Wallenstein and of the League had 
begun to put the Edict into execution, when the Catholic princes, 
jealous of Wallenstein's influence, and with complaints of the extortion 
and cruelty practised by his army, induced Ferdinand to dismiss 
him. Part of his fine force was disbanded, and part was handed 
over to Tilly. This was a fatal step for Ferdinand. The Protestant 
cause was on the verge of ruin, when the third or Swedish period 
of the struggle began with the appearance on the scene of Gustavus 
Adolphus, king of Sweden. This Protestant champion, born at 



The Thirty Years' War 453 

Stockholm in 1594, and king of Sweden from 161 1 to 1632, was 
grandson of the great Gustavus Vasa. He is one of the noblest 
characters in history, one of the most illustrious men of modern 
days. Carefully trained, he was highly accomplished in modern 
languages and classical learning, and in all athletic exercises. 
On coming to the throne in his 18th year, he remedied the dis- 
orders of his country, securing the adhesion of the nobles by 
wise concessions of privilege on condition of military service, and 
reforming the whole administration. It is only in romances that 
we find unmixed single motives of action, and the historical fact 
is that the great Swede, devotedly attached to the Protestant faith, 
and eager to restore the fallen cause in Germany, and being husband 
of the elector of Brandenburg's daughter, was jealous of the revived 
strength of the German Empire, and aimed at dominion on the 
southern Baltic coast, where he had already won territory in war 
with Russia. He desired chiefly, however, in Germany, to prevent 
a union of the Jesuit and the soldier which would be fatal to the 
religion which he loved. His operations were undertaken with 
the approval of the French statesman Richelieu, whose policy had, 
as a chief object, the depression of the House of Austria. In the 
summer of 1630, at the head of 15,000 men, the best disciplined, 
best trained, and best equipped soldiers of the time, Gustavus 
landed in Pomerania. The Protestant people hailed him as a 
coming deliverer; the princes at first held aloof, in a jealous suspicion 
of his designs. The admirable conduct of the Swedish veterans, 
in strong contrast to that which had been displayed by the licentious 
and ruffianly troops of Tilly and Wallenstein, and the influence of 
the Swedish king's noble character, won by degrees the confidence 
of the Protestant leaders, and he was soon regarded with universal 
admiration by those whose faith and freedom he had come to save. 
Pomerania and Mecklenburg were quickly cleared of the imperialist 
forces; Richelieu, in 1631, signed a treaty guaranteeing substantial 
help in funds for five years on condition of his maintaining an army 
of 36,000 men, refraining from change in the political system of 
Germany, and respecting the Catholic religion. On these terms 
Gustavus set to work. Tilly was driven back to the Elbe ; the 
fortresses on the Baltic were captured, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 
with a large imperialist garrison, fell. The emperor's army had 
been reinforced, and while the Swedish king waited for help from 
the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, there came, in May, 163 1, 
the storming of Magdeburg by Pappenheim, a general under Tilly, 
30 



454 A History of the World 

who was in no wise responsible for the horrors which occurred. 
The " sack of Magdeburg," ruined for resisting the Edict of 
Restitution, became a proverb for atrocious cruelty. Thousands 
of citizens were murdered, and the whole place, with the exception 
of the cathedral, was destroyed by fire. Thus encouraged, Ferdinand 
refused to withdraw the Edict, and haughtily commanded the 
Protestant princes to disband their troops. A reply soon came from 
Gustavus Adolphus, who had been joined by Bernhard of Saxe- 
Weimar, and by the elector of Saxony, after Tilly had forced the 
surrender of Leipzig. The power of the Swedish army lay in its 
flexibility of movement, and its quickness of fire with musket and 
cannon, owing to improvements made by the king. Tilly was 
an able commander of the old Spanish school, waiting until he 
had a superiority of numbers, and then using the heavy-column 
system of attack. In September, at the great battle of Breitenfeld, 
a village five miles north of Leipzig, Gustavus and his men showed 
their quality, gaining a splendid victory, after a contest in which 
Tilly left 6,000 men on the field. This success, a triumph, in the 
military way, of intelligence over routine, of individual spirit over the 
mechanical order and obedience of the Catholic system, had great 
political importance, in virtually making an end of Ferdinand's 
Edict of Restitution. The joy of Protestant Germany was great. 
The victor then marched for the Rhine, and enabled the Swedish 
troops, much enfeebled by disease and want, to gain new strength 
in the richest part of German territory. The Palatinate was 
recovered, and Gustavus held court at Mainz (Mayence), surrounded 
by Protestant princes and envoys. In April, 1632, Tilly was again 
defeated, and mortally wounded, at the battle of the Lech, in which 
Gustavus, with the fire of his terrible artillery, forced the passage 
of the river in the teeth of his foe. He was now master of all 
Germany, except the emperor's hereditary dominions in the east 
and south, and Ferdinand, in his trouble, was obliged to have 
recourse to the discarded Wallenstein. 

That very able man quickly gathered a large force, and drove 
the Saxons out of Bohemia. The Swedish sovereign advanced to 
meet him, and found him a difficult man to deal with. Wallenstein, 
declining battle, formed a fortified camp near Nuremberg, and there, 
for n weeks, from July to September, 1632, he kept behind his 
strong intrenchments. A Swedish attack was then repulsed with 
heavy loss, and Gustavus advanced to the Danube, while Wallenstein, 
turning upon defenceless Saxony, ravaged the country with ruthless 



The Thirty Years' War 455 

cruelty. Then the Swedish king, reinforced by Bernhard of Saxe- 
Weimar, attacked his enemy at Liitzen, ten miles south-west of 
Leipzig. After a desperate battle, Wallenstein was defeated, but 
the victory was very dearly purchased by the death of Gustavus, 
who, in the prevailing fog, rode almost alone into the midst of a 
party of the enemy, and was dispatched by several wounds. He 
left a stainless and deathless name, and the fall of the hero ended 
for the time the hopes of the German Protestants. The Swedish 
forces came under the command of Bernhard, now duke of Weimar, 
and of Generals Horn and Baner, while the able statesman 
Oxenstierna, the Swedish chancellor, directed home and foreign 
affairs in the minority of Christina, the infant daughter of Gustavus. 
During 1633 the war continued, with general success for Wallen- 
stein, but his career ended in the following year with his murder 
by a party of his officers. He had been already deposed from his 
command on a charge of designs to gain supreme power in Germany, 
and his slayers were richly rewarded by the emperor. In the same 
year, 1634, the imperialists severely defeated the Swedes, under 
Bernhard and Horn, at the great battle of Nordlingen, with the loss 
of 10,000 men killed and wounded, and of 6,000 prisoners, including 
Horn. The elector of Saxony and other princes then made peace 
with Ferdinand, and the war seemed about to collapse, with the 
submission of all southern Germany to the emperor early in 1635, 
when the struggle entered on another phase with the active interven- 
tion of Cardinal Richelieu. The great French statesman had made a 
treaty with Oxenstierna, by which France was to receive, in the event 
of success, some German territory in return for aid to the Protestant 
cause. Duke Bernhard, gathering a fine army in the Rhine-territory, 
entered the French service, and Baner, the Swedish general, carried 
on the war in Saxony and elsewhere. On Ferdinand's side, the 
Treaty of Prague, concluded in May, 1635, had practically given 
up the Edict of Restitution, so that the Protestants had the chief 
part of the northern bishoprics, while the Palatinate became 
Catholic. Lutheranism was to be the only privileged form of 
Protestantism : the Calvinist states had no concessions. Branden- 
burg and most of the Protestant states accepted these terms. 

The Thirty Years' War now entered on its fourth and last period, 
the Franco-Swedish. The ideals of Ferdinand, the recovery of 
Church property ; of Gustavus Adolphus, a Protestant political 
union ; and of Wallenstein, a national unity on a military basis, 
had all disappeared, and the contest became a political one, in 



456 A History of the World 

which the French and the Swedes were pitted against the Austrians 
and Spaniards. The struggle had by this time assumed a horrible 
character, owing to the utter want of discipline in the armies, 
and the suffering inflicted by their outrages on the people. 
Augsburg, after the victory of Nordlingen, was reduced by the 
imperialists in a siege of seven months' duration, and, when the 
city fell, her 70,000 inhabitants had dwindled away to 10,000 
starved wretches, and a great commercial place had become a poor 
country-town. The death of Ferdinand in 1637 brought to the 
empire his son Ferdinand III. (163 7-1 65 7), who desired peace, 
but was unable to obtain it. A great French army had been put 
into the field. Attacks on the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands 
and in northern Italy had failed : the Swedish general, Baner, had 
some success. On his death in 1641, the new Swedish commander, 
Torstenson, gained a victory in the second battle of Breitenfeld 
or Leipzig, and then, called away by Danish attack on Sweden, 
he conquered Holstein and Schleswig, and invaded Jutland. Bern- 
hard had gained some victories and towns in Alsace, but in 1639 
his services were lost by his death, and in 1643 the French were 
completely beaten by an Austro-Bavanan army. Richelieu had 
died in the previous year, and some new and very able French 
commanders appeared in Marshal Turenne, and the Bourbon prince, 
the Due d'Enghien, better known as the prince of Conde, or " the 
great Conde." These two commanders, in 1644, captured the chief 
places in the Rhine-country, after the splendid victory of the young 
Conde, in May, 1643, at the battle of Rocroy, north-west of Sedan, 
over the Spanish troops, a final blow to the glory of Spanish 
arms. In 1645 Torstenson gained victories over the imperialists 
at Magdeburg and in Bohemia, and in August of that year, at 
the second battle of Nordlingen, north-east of Ulm, Turenne and 
Conde, after a severe struggle, won another victory, and were then 
driven back to the Rhine by the reinforced enemy. Thus the 
hideous contest went on. The French could not be driven from 
Alsace. The Swedes, after advancing nearly to Vienna, had retired. 
The imperialists could not force Sweden from her hold on northern 
Germany. All parties saw that a continuance of the murderous 
work was useless, and after long negotiations, the Peace of 
Westphalia, concluded in October, 1648, ended the Thirty Years' 
War. 

By this treaty, Sweden received, as a fief of the empire, giving 
three votes in the Diet, a large part of Pomerania, and some other 



The Thirty Years' War 457 

north German territory. France had sovereign power in Alsace 
until 1871, except in Strasburg and some other imperial estates, 
and retained the bishoprics and cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. 
Brandenburg retained part of Pomerania, and received the arch- 
bishopric of Magdeburg as a duchy. The German princes became 
territorially independent of the emperor. The republics of the 
United Netherlands and of Switzerland finally assumed the same 
position of independence. As regarded the religious question, 
Catholics and Protestants, in all imperial affairs, were placed on 
an equality. Calvinists, as well as Lutherans, now had the freedom 
of worship granted by the Treaty of Passau and the Peace of 
Augsburg. Austrian and Bohemian Protestants gained no rights, 
but the Lower (Rhenish) Palatinate, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and 
some other states had the exercise of the Protestant religion as 
in 1618. The members of the restored imperial court were to be 
Protestants and Catholics in equal numbers. All Church-property 
which the Protestants had held in 1624 was to remain in their 
possession. The Catholics were much disgusted by these con- 
cessions to their opponents, and the Pope (Innocent X.) issued 
a " bull," in which he declared the Peace to be, in his Latin, " null, 
vain, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, void, empty 
of strength and effect, in the past, the present, and the future." 
The day of Papal supremacy was waning, and to these awful 
denunciations no one paid the slightest heed. The Lower (Rhenish) 
Palatinate was transferred to the son of the former elector, now 
deceased. In regard to the position of the " Holy Roman Empire," 
the last link which bound Germany to Rome was broken ; the 
principles by virtue of which the empire had existed were all 
abandoned, now that both Lutherans and Calvinists were declared 
free from the jurisdiction of the Pope or of any Catholic prelate. 
The empire now contained and recognised as it's members persons 
who formed a visible body at issue with the Holy Roman Church, 
and schismatics had equal civil rights with Catholics. The sove- 
reignty of Rome was thus abrogated, and the Roman theory of 
Church and State was annulled, so far as regarded Germany. In 
civil affairs, the rights of making war and peace, of raising troops, 
building fortresses, levying contributions, passing or interpreting 
laws, lay henceforth, not with the emperor, but with the Diet. 
In 1654 it became a permanent body, destined to be notorious for 
formal, pompous, vain trifling. Religious difficulties were to be 
henceforth settled, not in the Diet, but by negotiations between 



458 A History of the World 

states concerned. The Peace of Westphalia ended the last of the 
religious wars, and was the close of the period of the Reformation 
and Catholic reaction, drawing a final line of demarcation between 
the two religions. Thirty years of war had ended in a compromise 
under which the religious position of each German territory was 
fixed by the intervention of foreign powers, the rights of the central 
government being utterly ignored. 

The results of the war to Germany were deplorable and long- 
enduring. Not only had this wicked contest, while it raged, 
produced an infinite sum of misery to millions of innocent people ; 
not only had towns and villages been ruined by hundreds, and the 
manufactures and commerce of the country thrown back for a 
century. Great moral, political, and intellectual mischief was caused. 
Literature and art almost perished. Apart from Frederick the 
Great, scarcely any grand character arose in Germany for a century 
and a half. There was no originality, no noble enterprise, no 
sacrifice made for great public interests, no instance in which the 
welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of princes. 
The great Frenchman Richelieu had, in conjunction with Sweden, 
worked his will on Germany. The House of Hapsburg had been 
humbled. German unity had been, for a long period, made 
impossible. About 300 petty principalities, between the Alps and 
the Baltic, formed a confederation of the loosest kind, with no 
common treasury or efficient common tribunals, no means of 
coercing a refractory member ; with different religions and different 
forms of government, and with the most embarrassing diversity of 
judicial and financial administration. Each petty prince had his 
own little court, a ridiculous copy of the pompous etiquette of 
Versailles ; his own little army, separate coinage, tolls and customs- 
houses on the frontier, and a crowd of fussy, pedantic officials, 
with a chief minister who was often at once the minion of his 
sovereign and in the pay of some foreign court. These princes, 
freed from imperial control, were mere despots in their own 
dominions, symbols of a degraded condition of feudalism which had 
ousted the power of the feudal lord without the least benefit to 
the people. Political life, in the true sense, there was none, and 
down to the French revolution, save in Prussia and as regards the 
wars that were waged for territory, the history of Germany presents 
little more than " the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling 
of diplomatists at never-ending congresses." 

During the Thirty Years' War, the great contest for political 



The First Stuarts 459 

freedom had been proceeding in the British Isles under the reigns 
of the first two Stuart kings. We shall deal with this great subject 
in the briefest fashion, on the assumption that all readers of this 
History of the World have a competent acquaintance with the 
annals of their own country. Turning first to Scotland, prior to 
the union of the crowns, we find that the weak, indolent, pedantic 
James VI., possessed of ideas involving a " divine right " both for 
sovereigns and for bishops, began to rule in the northern kingdom, 
in 1 58 1, at 15 years of age, after a long minority passed under 
various regents — Moray, Lennox, Mar, Morton — and partly in a 
state of civil war for the realm. His proceedings in Scotland after 
1603, when he became James I. of England, have been above given. 
Apart from strictly political events, the Gunpowder Plot (1605) is 
notable as having been due to the rage and disappointment of some 
fanatical Catholic converts who had expected concessions to their 
faith from the new sovereign and were met by an enforcement of 
the severe laws of Elizabeth against all who refused to go to the 
services of the Anglican Church or assisted at mass. The unjust 
result to the Catholics as a body, so loyal to their country and 
sovereign in recent Armada days, was the immediate and future 
enactment of further penal laws. The tyranny of James I. consisted 
in illegal raising of money by customs-dues without grant of 
Parliament, in the imposition of a " benevolence " ; the dismissal 
from office of Chief-Justice Coke for his condemnation of the 
exaction ; and the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh to please the 
court of Spain. Parliament showed a revival of power and spirit 
in successful impeachments, including that of the illustrious 
Chancellor ; and in the " Great Protestation," asserting its liberties 
as the birthright of the people of England, and its right to discuss 
all urgent affairs of state. In the imprisonment of members for this 
attitude in favour of freedom, James continued a precedent of 
Elizabeth in a way which showed his ignorance or disregard of a 
changed state of feeling in his people. 

Under Charles I. (1625-1649), the evil political training bestowed 
by the father wrought ruin for the son. In 1628 the Petition of 
Right against illegal taxation, martial law at home in time of 
peace, illegal imprisonment, and other grievances, received the 
royal assent, only to be outrageously violated, in every point, during 
the "Tyranny" lasting from 1629 to 1640. Wentworth (earl of 
Strafford), in civil affairs, archbishop Laud, in ecclesiastical matters, 
were the agents of despotic power. The High Commission Court 



460 A History of the World 

punished Puritans by fines, imprisonment, and exile. The Star- 
Chamber — by fines, long imprisonments, cutting off of ears and 
nose, and fixing in the pillory — wrought havoc on opponents of the 
Crown, and money was raised by every kind of lawless device. The 
attempt to abolish Presbyterianism in Scotland caused a renewal 
of the former Covenants of 1557 and 1581 against " Popery," and the 
" Solemn League and Covenant" drew all classes together against the 
king. A rebellion in the north caused Charles to give way, from 
lack of good troops or money to pay them. In 1640 the Long 
Parliament met, with Pym, Hampden, Selden, Cromwell, and other 
patriots among its members. Strafford's head fell by an Act of 
Attainder ; Laud became a prisoner in the Tower, to die on the 
scaffold some years later. The mad attempt of Charles to seize 
the Five Members in the House of Commons was the immediate 
cause of civil war in the summer of 1642. The genius of Cromwell 
and the valour of his " Ironsides " overcame the fiery efforts of Rupert 
and the cavaliers, and the great victories of Marston Moor and 
Naseby ruined the royal cause, and enabled a fanatical military 
section of the republican party to bring the king to a scaffold on 
January 30th, 1649. This violent, illegal, cruel, and most impolitic 
act made a practical end of monarchy in the British Isles for just 
the period during which the tyranny which provoked rebellion had 
endured. The efforts of the gallant Montrose in Scotland, in behalf 
of Charles, had finally failed in September, 1645, and the invading 
Scottish army of 1648 was destroyed by Cromwell, in August, at 
Preston. 

In Ireland, during this period, some important events occurred. 
From 1605 to 1608 an able and vigorous administrator, Sir Arthur 
Chichester, was in power as lord-deputy, and the rebellious chiefs 
in Ulster, O'Neill and O'Donnell, who were earls of Tyrone and 
Tyrconnel, were driven out when they opposed the introduction of 
English law, and the tribal institutions and hereditary jurisdictions 
of the chieftains were abolished. A large area of territory was con- 
fiscated, with the expulsion of native Irish to the south and west. It 
is in these appropriations of territory for the benefit of alien and 
Protestant possessors that we find the root of the Irish land-question 
and the source of most of her people's modern troubles. In 16 10 
the modern province of Ulster began to rise through the measure 
known as the "Plantation" or "Colonisation" in that region, 
whereby the land was, to a large extent, placed in the hands of 
Scottish and English settlers, forming in course of time the great 



France 46 1 

Protestant stronghold in the north of Ireland, the centre of, good 
tillage, and of flourishing manufactures. Under Charles I., Lord 
Wentworth (Strafford) ruled the country from 1632 to 1640, showing 
great ability and energy in maintaining order, and founding the 
linen-industry by the growth of flax in Ulster. In support of his 
tyrannical sovereign, he also raised a force of Irish troops for service 
in England. Disorder of the most serious character followed his 
return to England. The Catholic lords, mainly of English origin, 
caused the rebellion of 1641, in which the natives murdered some 
thousands of the Ulster Protestants. The Catholics were then 
practically masters of the country duiing the civil war in England. 

Chapter VII. — France ; Southern and Eastern Europe. 

In France, Louis XIII. (1610-1643) came to the throne as a boy 
of nine years, son of Henri Quatre. His mother, Marie de' Medici, 
was regent until 161 7, and the able Sully was removed from office. 
The Edict of Nantes was confirmed in 16 14, and the national 
Parliament, or States-General, composed of the nobles, the clergy, 
and the middle classes or bourgeoisie, was summoned for the last 
time before the eve of the French Revolution. This body proved 
to have no capacity for settling a national policy. Warfare with the 
Huguenots, ending in 1622, brought the loss of most of their 
strongholds. From 1624 onwards Cardinal Richelieu, one of the 
greatest of modern statesmen, diplomatists, and administrators, was 
the real ruler of the country. This very able man, one of the 
utmost vigilance and resolution, unscrupulous as to means, clear- 
headed as to his aims, crushed all plots against his power, overcame 
all resistance of the nobles, and laid the foundations of absolute 
rule for the next monarch. The Huguenots were finally mastered 
in the capture of their chief stronghold, La Rochelle, in 1628. The 
policy and success of Richelieu in the Thirty Years' War have been 
above related. On his death in 1642 Richelieu left France in the 
foremost European position, in succession to Spain, and the way 
was cleared, both at home and abroad, for the power and influence 
exercised by Louis XIV. 

In the great peninsula of south-western Europe, the death of 
Philip II. in 1598 brought to the throne his son, the weak Philip III., 
who was wholly in the hands of the duke of Lerma until 1618. 
The country was greatly and permanently injured through the 
expulsion, in 1609, in pursuance of the usual bigoted policy, of those 



462 A History of the World 

diligent and skilful tillers of the soil, the Moriscos, to the number 
of over half a million. The descendants of the children, under 
four years of age, who were kept behind to be trained as Catholics, 
and of all who had been converted to Christianity, were constantly 
persecuted on suspicion of heresy, and as tainted with Moorish 
blood, which was a bar to the holding of the meanest public office. 
The credit of the country was for a time maintained abroad through 
the skill in war of Spinola and other commanders, but the best day 
of Spain was clearly over. The long reign of Philip IV. (1621-1665) 
brought no improvement. The king was as incapable as his father 
had been, and the real ruler, the chief minister Olivarez, count and 
duke, used his abilities to extort money, by corrupt means, including 
the sale of all public offices, for wasteful expenditure on ambitious 
foreign projects. The navy was ruined by the rising Dutchmen. 
A false colonial policy, by its selfish monopolies and restrictions, 
threw the profit of trade into the hands of skilful and daring 
smugglers, and the very abundance of gold and silver from the 
American mines raised the price of purchase for articles which the 
decline of the national industries compelled Spain to procure from 
abroad. Philip II. had begun to raise money without consent of 
the Cortes or Parliament, and that body had ceased to be regularly 
convened. The ancient privileges of Aragon and Castile had been 
abolished, and the government became absolute. 

The decline of Portugal rapidly followed her great period of 
history. The chief causes of this change may be briefly stated. 
Emmanuel (Manoel) "the Fortunate" was eager to secure for 
himself and his dynasty the throne of Spain, and with this view 
he proposed to marry the Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of 
Ferdinand and Isabella ot Aragon and Castile. As a bait to 
Spanish bigotry, he undertook to expel the Jews and unbaptised 
Moors from his country. The Jews of Portugal formed a chief 
element in her commercial prosperity, and were renowned through- 
out Europe for wealth, acuteness, and integrity. They had dwelt 
for centuries in the land, at first protected by the Moors, and then 
favoured by such monarchs as Diniz and John " the Great." For 
this security and tolerance they had made an ample return in 
promoting the trade of their adopted country, dwelling chiefly in 
the great towns, especially in Lisbon, Evora, and Santarem. This 
suicidal measure was carried out by Emmanuel, and with the Jews 
departed many Mohammedans, who had fled from Spain on the 
capture of Granada in 1492. Emmanuel married the Infanta 



Portugal 463 

Isabella, but he did not obtain the throne of Spain, through the 
death of his queen in 1498. Her infant son died two years later, 
and the widower's marriage with his deceased wife's sister Donna 
Maria of Castile did not attain the object he had in view. She was 
only a third daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the throne of 
Spain came, as we have seen, to the son of the second daughter 
Joanna, who became the emperor Charles V. Another cause of 
decline is to be found in the decay of the old nobility, whose 
descendants were mere courtiers instead of patriots, devoted to 
a sovereign whose wealth enabled him to bestow highly paid offices 
and large pensions. Public spirit by degrees died away, and political 
power, as well as a large part of the wealth of the country, was in 
the possession of the Crown. 

Under John III. (1521-1557) the downward course became 
more perceptible and rapid. This bigoted monarch, in 1536, in- 
troduced the Inquisition, and four years later he admitted the 
Jesuits. The tyranny and oppression exercised by these institutions, 
both in the colonies and at home, were very baneful to progress and 
public spirit. All the chief towns won from the Moors, and held by 
Portugal, in northern Africa, except Ceuta and Mazagon, were given 
up during the reign. Under an absolute king surrounded by 
sycophant nobles eager only for court-pensions or lucrative posts, 
corruption invaded every department of the administration. Greedy 
fortune-hunters and intriguers throve while merit was neglected, 
and it was from lack of due reward for his enterprise that the great 
navigator Magalhaes (Magellan) deserted his native country and 
took service with Spain. A very serious cause of Portuguese 
decline is found in the rapid decrease of population. The southern 
territory, Alemtejo and the Algarves, laid waste in the Moorish 
wars, had never been well repeopled and tilled, and large numbers 
of young, vigorous, and enterprising citizens were lost by emigration 
to the new colonies in the East and West. Many of those who 
remained in Portugal flocked to Lisbon, which had become the 
chief distributing centre of Eastern products, and the capital, in 
the space of 80 years, trebled its population, in spite of the ravages 
of pestilence due to a fearfully unsanitary condition. The large 
estates of the king and nobles, instead of being subjected to careful 
and scientific agriculture, were abandoned to the cheap and 
inefficient labour of African slaves, imported in such numbers as 
almost entirely to populate the Algarves and outnumber the free 
people in Lisbon itself. The kingdom was becoming rotten at 



464 A History of the World 

heart, in spite of the wealth of the capital, the courtiers, and the 
king, who was the richest sovereign in Europe. 

The last shock to a decayed fabric with a yet fair exterior came 
under King Sebastian, who reigned from 1557 to 1578. A pathetic 
and romantic interest yet clings to the memory of this gallant young 
prince, Dom Sebastian, who died on the battle-field against Moorish 
foes, and in whom, save for a two-years' reign, the House of Aviz, 
the old Burgundian line, came to an end. He was but three years 
old when he became king, as grandson of John III. His mother, 
Donna Joanna, daughter of the emperor Charles V., retired to 
Spain, leaving him to the care of his grandparents. The queen, 
Donna Catharina, sister of Charles V., was regent, very unpopular 
with the Portuguese from her Spanish exclusiveness, bigotry, and 
pride. She retired to Spain in 1562, and the little king's uncle, 
Cardinal Henry, assumed nominal power, the rule of the country 
being really in the hands of two able Jesuits. In 1568 Dom 
Sebastian, then not 15 years of age, took up the government, and 
dismissed the Jesuits from office. The young king, rather German 
than Portuguese in features, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was of a 
dreamy and romantic turn of mind, a builder of air-castles, a lover 
of the marvellous, a seeker of adventures. His zeal for orthodoxy 
impelled him into a new Crusade, in an age too advanced for such 
adventures. With a warlike ambition Sebastian combined a fond- 
ness for solitude, and a deep melancholy of disposition which 
seemed to forebode an early and tragical end. In 1574, in his 20th 
year, he crossed to Africa, as if to recover the lost towns, but his 
small force of horse and loot was engaged only in raids wherein 
the king recklessly sought positions of peril. Two years later, a 
more serious enterprise in Morocco, then troubled by a disputed 
succession, was undertaken, and Sebastian hired a large mercenary 
force, composed of men of different nations, ill-organised and ill- 
equipped for his enterprise. Against the advice of Philip II. of 
Spain, his uncle, Sebastian set sail in June, 1578, with a force of 
15,000 infantry, 2,400 cavalry, and 36 guns. About 10,000 were 
Portuguese, and the rest were Spanish, German, and Italian hired 
troops and volunteers, the latter, 900 in number, being commanded 
by a brave English Catholic, Sir Thomas Stukeley, who had been 
intercepted by the Portuguese king while he was on his way to raise 
an insurrection in Ireland against Queen Elizabeth. The march 
inland, at the end of July, under the burning sun, disabled many of 
the invaders, who were also harassed by the Moorish skirmishers. 



Portugal — Venice 465 

On August 4th Sebastian and his men, in a Dad position, with 
both flanks exposed, were attacked by the Moors with 40,000 horse 
and 15,000 foot. The wings of the king's army were soon over- 
lapped, and after four hours' desperate fighting the Christian army 
was cut to pieces, 9,000 being killed, including Sebastian and Sir 
Thomas Stukeley, and the rest made prisoners. Only 50 men 
escaped from the field. Many of the chief Portuguese nobles and 
prelates perished on this disastrous day. The king's body was 
recovered, and finally buried, after interment at Ceuta, in the Church 
of St. Jerome at Belem. For many years the Portuguese people 
believed that Sebastian was still alive, and would reappear at some 
crisis, and many pretended Dora Sebastians arose. The dead king's 
uncle, Cardinal Henry, last of the line of Aviz, reigned from 1578 
to 1580, and then, after a struggle among several candidates for the 
throne, Philip II. of Spain, winning over a majority of the Cortes, 
and bribing the duke of Braganza, husband of the true heiress to 
the Portuguese throne by descent from Emmanuel, obtained the 
sovereignty for himself, and entered Lisbon in triumph in 1581. 
Henceforth for nearly 60 years Portugal was but a province of 
Spain, losing territory in the East and in the Western world under 
Dutch and English attacks, and suffering from the ruinous wars 
waged in the Netherlands and Germany and against England. 
Under Philip III. and Philip IV. of Spain, the tyranny exercised 
by the chief ministers, the duke of Lerma and Olivarez, provoked 
a spirit of resistance, and in 1640 a general rising of the people 
and of the nobles, headed by John, duke of Braganza, the heir to 
the throne, made an end of Spanish domination. The duke came 
to the throne in January, 1641, as John IV. of Portugal, first 
sovereign of the House of Braganza. In the ensuing war with 
Spain, the Portuguese were at first aided by French and Dutch 
fleets, and by English troops, and the old possessions in India, 
Malacca, and Brazil were regained. In 1661 the aid of England 
was again obtained after the marriage of Catharine of Braganza to 
Charles II., and a long struggle ended, in 1668, in the formal 
recognition of Portuguese independence by Spain. 

In Italy, we turn first to Venice, and find her in a declining 
condition. Her former bold and brilliant policy, full of energy and 
resolution, became timid statecraft, and the great republic of the 
Adriatic was, in the end, regarded as a useless ally, an uncertain 
friend, and a foe of small account. A stand was made, early in 
the 17th century, against Papal claims urged by Paul V., and the 



466 A History of the World 

matter was compromised by the admission of his power over ecclesias- 
tics, and the enforcement of the Venetian Senate's edict of expulsion 
against the Jesuits. In 1522 the capture of Rhodes by the Turks 
deprived Venice of a useful ally, and damaged her Levantine trade. 
There was much naval warfare with the Turks in the 16th century. 
In 157 1 Cyprus was lost by the surrender of Famagosta to Turkish 
besiegers, after a heroic defence, and at the end of this period 
the republic retained, in the Grecian archipelagos, only Candia 
(Crete), Paros, and the Ionian Isles. 

In the 1 6th' century the kings of Spain and the Popes wielded, 
in this order of importance, the chief power in Italy. In the north 
there was a rising state — Savoy. Formerly connected with Burgundy, 
the power of the counts of Savoy became solely Italian, in 
possession of Piedmont, gradually gaining territory in Italy. In 
1 64 1 an Amadeus became duke of Savoy, receiving his title from 
the emperor Sigismund. About the middle of the 16th century 
all the territories were lost to Francis I. of France, but Emmanuel 
Phillibert (1553-1580), son of Charles III. of Savoy, regained them 
in 1559 by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Piedmont, with Turin 
as capital, was now the chief state in the dominions of the dukes 
of Savoy, who also held the territory of their title, with Nizza (Nice) 
and other lands to the north-west of the Alps. Charles Emmanuel I. 
(1580-1630), married to Philip II. of Spain's sister, was an ambitious 
man, who invaded Provence without success, and even ventured 
on war with Spain, maintaining his position to the end of his 
reign. 

The Popes, at the end of the 16th century, had a rich, fine 
territory in the States of the Church, but the people generally 
suffered much from misrule involving heavy taxation, and the 
temporal power sank into general discredit during the 17th and 
following centuries. 

In Poland, Sigismund I., of the Jagiello or Jagellon dynasty, 
reigned from 1506 to 1548. The country was at this time pre- 
dominant in eastern Europe, with a flourishing trade in wheat and 
timber, her two natural sources of wealth, carried on from the mouth 
of the Vistula, acquired by treaty in 1466. The government was 
mainly in the hands of the nobles, who became farmers on a large 
scale, employing the forced labour of serfs, and thereby gaining 
great wealth. Trouble arose from the introduction of the Protestant 
doctrines, which spread rapidly in some quarters, but the bulk of 
the people remained Catholic. In the next reign (Sigismund II., 



Poland 467 

1548-1572) Lithuania was joined to Poland, and Warsaw became the 
capital. A large part of Livonia was conquered, but territory in the 
east was lost in war with Russia. The population of the country 
rapidly grew, and along with it the authority of the nobles, who had 
spiritual power over their serfs, though a Diet of 1573 enacted tolera- 
tion for all religious opinions. The Diet, consisting of the higher 
nobility and of deputies chosen by the inferior nobles, sat in one 
chamber, with the absurd provision, at a later date, of the liberum veto 
by which a single vote could stay the progress of any measure. The 
ruin of Poland may be traced, in a large degree, to this Slavonic 
requirement of unanimous voting, which was used to shield corrupt 
conduct or to gratify private malice, and hindered all legislative 
improvement. The crown became virtually elective, and in 1575 
a majority of the nobles' votes gave the sovereignty to one of 
Poland's best kings, Stephen Batory, prince of Transylvania, a 
famous soldier, who warred successfully against Russia. The throne 
was accepted by him under restrictions which gave the Diet control 
over a declaration of war and all military expeditions ; the imposition 
of taxes ; the choice of the council of ministers ; and the marriage 
and divorce of the sovereign. A general Diet was to be convoked 
every two years, or oftener if it were needful, and the duration of 
a session was limited to six weeks. Under the long reign of 
Sigismund III. (1586-1632), a Swedish prince, there were quarrels 
between the king and the Diet, and much persecution of the 
"Dissidents" or Protestants. In 1621 a great host of Turks and 
Tartars was defeated at Chocim by the renowned Polish general 
Chodkiewicz. The country had been in a declining stage during 
this period. The Protestants were estranged by persecution, and 
the anarchical conduct of the nobles reached its height. The 
Jesuits ill-treated members of the Greek Church. Livonia was 
conquered by Sweden, and during the period ending with 1668. 
Wallachia and Moldavia were annexed by the Turks ; and the 
Cossacks of the Ukraine, who had been organised into regiments 
of frontier-troops by Stephen Batory, were driven into rebellion by 
oppression and by religious persecution as members of the Greek 
Church. In 1654 these useful military subjects of the monarchy 
willingly submitted to Russian rule. Towards the close of the 
reign of John Casimir (1648-1668) the land beyond the Dnieper 
was ceded to Russia, after the country had been entirely overrun for 
a time by invading Swedes, Russians, and Brandenburgers. 

In Russia, government assumed its existing autocratic character 



468 A History of the World 

in the reign of Ivan IV. (1546-1584), surnamed "the Terrible" 
from his tyrannous deeds. The country had seemed likely to 
become another Poland, in the hands of rival parties of nobles, 
when this strong, cruel ruler, after a long struggle, put down the 
feudal oligarchy, with the aid of enfranchised towns. He first 
assumed the title of "Tsar," a term connected with " Csesar," and 
the equivalent of " King " or " Kaiser," being the word applied in 
the Russian translations of the Bible to the kings of Judea and the 
Roman emperors. In his time English trade with Russia began by 
way of Archangel, and enlightened policy was shown in the welcome 
extended to foreigners whose superior knowledge in military and 
scientific matters might benefit the country. Much unsuccessful 
war was waged, but the empire was put in a state of defence by the 
erection of many strong fortresses ; Moscow was adorned with new 
buildings, and the printing-press was established there in 1553. 
The laws were codified, and Church-matters were regulated by a 
council. A large part of Siberia was subdued by a conquering 
Cossack officer, and that region became, at the close of the 16th 
century, the receptacle of political and criminal prisoners. Under a 
feeble son and successor of Ivan, the boyars, a secondary class of 
nobles, recovered much of their former power, and disorder came 
from the quarrels of rival parties. A law was promulgated by the 
Tsar's brother-in-law, acting as regent, which ultimately changed 
the condition of the peasantry into serfdom, by abolishing the right 
of annual removal to another estate, and attaching the labourer 
perforce to the land, Early in the 17th century much trouble was 
caused by the appearance of an impostor claiming to be the eldest 
son of Ivan IV., murdered by his father in a fit of passion. This 
" false Dmitri " was supported by the Jesuits and by some of the 
nobles in Poland, and by king Sigismund, and his appearance in 
Russia with an army of Polish volunteers was hailed by the people 
as that of a lawful sovereign. Crowned at Moscow in 1605, he 
disappointed expectations by being a mere tool of the Poles, and 
was murdered in a revolt. New impostors appeared, and the 
country fell into an anarchical condition, while Cossacks from the 
Don and Dnieper wasted the provinces, and Polish forces occupied 
Moscow. The risings of the people in favour of the " false Dmitri " 
and other claimants of power were really revolts of the peasantry 
and small traders against the boyars who were striving to become 
an oligarchy like that of Poland. Order was at last restored by 
the union of the ecclesiastics with the people of the great towns. 



Hungary 469 

An army was raised, and the patriots drove out the Poles and 
Cossacks, and a " General Council of the Land," representative 
of all classes, elected a new Tsar in Michael Romanoff, member 
of a popular family. Under his reign, from 161 2 to 1645, there 
was trouble with the Swedes, the Poles, and turbulent nobles. 
Russia began to come more and more in contact with Western 
civilisation, and large numbers of foreign adventurers, including 
many Scotchmen — Hamiltons, Gordons, Bruces, Leslies, and others 
— made their way into the country, and in some cases founded 
families there. The death of Michael in 1645 brought his son 
Alexei (Alexis) to the throne, a ruler under whom much progress 
was made, and the days of his famous son were, in some measure, 
anticipated. The enforcement of serfdom by a new law caused 
many revolts. The States-General or Sobor (the " Council of the 
Land") was frequently convoked, for the revision and codifying 
of the laws and the reform of the local administration. Under 
Alexis, Russia finally had the better of Poland, and, as we have seen, 
gained the Cossacks as new subjects. The death of Alexis in 1676 
left the way open, after the lapse of a few years, to the great man 
under whom Russia was to throw aside the semi-Asiatic ways 
introduced by Mongol occupation, and to become a European 
power. 

In Hungary, a period of rapid decay set in after the death of 
Matthias, in 1490, leaving no legitimate heir. Various pretenders 
to the throne came forward, and the magnates chose Vladislaus, 
king of Bohemia. The oligarchy of nobles were the real masters 
of the country ; the finances were in a ruinous condition, and the 
military institutions were disorganised. Invasion came from Poland 
and from Maximilian of Germany, who was only quieted by a 
disgraceful treaty restoring the conquests of the great Matthias. 
An insurrection of the peasantry in 15 14 was attended by fearful 
outrages. These wretched people had long been the prey of 
plundering Turks on the one hand, and of the exactions of their 
lords on the other. They paid all the taxes, and the nobles, exempt 
from burdens, wasted their receipts in riotous living. Maddened 
by oppression, and headed by a Transylvanian named George Dozsa, 
the countrymen gathered at Pesth to the number of 40,000, and, 
taking the nobles unprepared, swept through the country, burning 
the castles and massacring their inmates. The nobles then closed 
their ranks, and, aided by forces from Transylvania, routed the rebels 
with great loss, and reduced the peasantry to the condition of serfs 
31 



470 A History of the World 

bound to the soil. This monstrous law, passed by the Diet in 15 14, 
was accompanied by the important code establishing equal rights 
for all members of the noble class, and exempting them from taxation, 
limiting the authority of the clergy over lay-nobles, and denying 
Papal rights over Church- benefices. 

Two years later Vladislaus died, and was succeeded by his son, 
Louis II., a lad of ten years, whose minority was marked by party- 
struggles among the magnates, and the general neglect of needful 
measures of reform. The introduction of Protestant doctrines 
brought new trouble in persecution of the reforming party, and then 
the Hungarian nobles, as if demented, grossly insulted their powerful 
neighbour Suleyman of Turkey, by cutting off the nose and ears 
of his envoy, dispatched on a peaceful errand, and sending him 
back to his master. This outrage on humanity and the law of 
nations brought prompt vengeance from the Sultan. The two 
strongest border-fortresses, Shabatz and Belgrade, were taken in 
1521, and the tidings roused the weak king Louis from his lethargy. 
A victory was gained over the Turks, but in 1526 Francis I. of 
France stirred up Suleyman against Hungary and the Hapsburg 
crown-lands, in order to divide the forces of his enemy Charles V. 
The Sultan took the field in person with 300,000 men and a 
great artillery, to meet which host Louis could only bring a force 
of 25,000, destitute of a capable commander. On August 29th, 1526, 
a day of evil name in Hungarian annals, the defenders of the 
country were almost annihilated at Mohacs, on the Danube. The 
king, with countless nobles and some prelates, perished in the 
battle, and the pillage of the country was followed by the capture 
of Buda, the destruction of the famous and magnificent library 
collected by Matthias, and the carrying-off of 30,000 people as 
slaves to the Turkish victors. Suleyman then retired, bearing away 
on shipboard down the Danube the bronze statues and other 
treasures of the palace at Buda, the only great building of the 
beautiful city which was not burned. 

The disaster of Mohacs soon brought the country under the 
rule of the Hapsburgs, in the person of Ferdinand of Austria, chosen 
by a majority of the nobles. For a century and a half the crescent- 
flag floated over Buda, though the people showed many instances 
of heroism in struggles against the power of the Moslem, defending 
fortresses with desperate courage, and reviving the memory of the 
long contest between Spaniards and Moors. Under the successors 
of Ferdinand of Austria — Maximilian, Rudolf, Ferdinand II., 



The Turkish Empire 471 

and Ferdinand III. — the utmost efforts were made to suppress 
Protestantism, to which the great majority of the people adhered, 
chiefly in the Calvinistic form among the Hungarians, and as 
Lutheranism among the German and Slavic inhabitants. The anti- 
Reformation movement, however, partly by force and partly by 
persuasion, won the mass of the nation, the nobles, the people of 
the towns, and the peasantry, back to the fold of the Catholic 
Church. During most of the 16th and the 17th centuries there 
was also a continual constitutional struggle between the privileged 
Hungarian class and the foreign Austrian dynasty. 

Under Selim I. of Turkey (1512-1520), who came to "power 
after the languid period of his father Bayezid I. (1481-1512), 
Kurdistan and other territories were annexed from Persia, Syria 
was subdued, and Egypt was torn away from the possession of 
the Mamluks, who had held it almost since the days of Saladin. 
This great conquest gave to the Turkish sultans authority over the 
sacred cities Mecca and Medina, and the inheritance of the Caliphs 
of Bagdad, with their symbols of office, the cloak and standard of 
the Prophet. The Sultan Selim was thus enabled to hold, and 
to transfer to his successors, the chief rule over Mohammedans, 
and the headship of the religion of Islam in its orthodox form. 
It was under his son, the famous Suleyman (or Soliman), surnamed 
" the Magnificent," that Ottoman power attained its zenith. For 
nearly half a century, from 1520 to 1566, he reigned in glory 
derived from military and naval successes. His capture of Belgrade, 
and his conquest of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John in 1522, 
have been already noticed, with his great victory at Mohacs and 
the subjugation of Hungary. In an age of great sovereigns and 
great events, Suleyman and his exploits were in the foremost rank. 
With almost all revived Europe arrayed against them, as single 
powers or in combination, at various times, the Ottomans held 
their ground, and emerged from their conflicts in many cases with 
triumphant success. In 1529 the great Sultan failed in a furious 
siege of Vienna, but the Austrian forces could not meet him in 
the field, and the very fact of the siege was a menace to Christendom. 
No sovereign of the age was this Sultan's superior in ability and 
wisdom, in mildness and justice, and there was none his equal in 
warlike achievements. In 1541 his ninth campaign in the north 
forced Charles V. to sue for peace, and the Archduke Ferdinand 
to pay tribute to Suleyman as his suzerain. In the day of great 
navies and commanders on the sea, of Doria of Genoa and Drake 



472 A History of the World 

of Devon, the Sultan's ships swept the Mediterranean up to the 
coast of Spain, and his admirals Barbarossa, Dragut, and other 
famous " Barbary corsairs," were the terror of all seafaring men 
and maritime states. In 1538 an Ottoman fleet beat the combined 
squadrons of pope, emperor, and doge off Prevesa, on the western 
coast of Turkey, at the entrance of the Gulf of Arta. On the other 
hand, in 1565, many thousands of Turks perished in a fruitless siege 
of Malta, heroically defended by her knights. This renowned 
Ottoman ruler, perhaps the greatest figure in Turkish history, left 
to his successors an empire which none of them was ever able to 
enlarge except in the conquest of Candia (Crete) and Cyprus. 
The Turkish dominions of his time included all the most famous 
Biblical and classical cities, save only Rome, Syracuse, and 
Persepolis. The crescent was dominant on the sites of Memphis 
and Carthage, Nineveh and Tyre, Palmyra and Babylon ; it 
waved in triumph over Damascus and Jerusalem, Alexandria and 
Smyrna, Athens and Philippi. At Algiers and Cairo, Medina and 
Mecca, Basra (Bassora), Bagdad, and Belgrade ; on the Nile and the 
Jordan, the Orontes, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Danube, the 
Hebrus, the Ilyssus, the Tanais (Don), and the Borysthenes 
(Dnieper), the Turk held sway. The Propontis (Sea of Marmara), 
the Palus Mseotis (Sea of Azov), the Euxine, and the Red Sea 
were Turkish lakes ; the dominion touched the Caucasus on the 
east, and Mount Atlas on the west, and included such famous 
peaks and ranges as Ararat and Sinai, Carmel and Taurus, Ida 
and Olympus, Pelion and Athos, Haemus (the Balkans) and the 
Carpathians. Such was the splendid empire which, under the 
successors of Suleyman, void of energy and ability, was to enter 
on the downward road to steady, inevitable, and prolonged decay, 
relieved at times by a revival of the old spirit of warlike zeal for the 
faith or for conquest. 

The growth of Russia and of other European powers was an 
external cause of decline, but the chief agent is found in the lack 
of the wisdom needful to maintain an empire of such a character, 
a dominion over many foreign races and creeds, requiring the 
preservation of the old military efficiency, and the exercise of 
conciliation towards subject peoples. Wealth and power fell into 
the hands of weak, indolent, and vicious sultans. The soldiery 
became disaffected, and, like the Praetorians of ancient Rome, raised 
and deposed rulers at their caprice or for bribes. The bulwarks 
of the throne, the Janissaries, lost discipline and martial spirit. 



The Turkish Empire 473 

Believers in absolute fate, and full of conceit inspired by former 
glory, the Turks regarded the Giaours, or infidels, with contempt, 
and cared not to adopt new scientific tactics and weapons. Rapacious 
pashas provoked provincial revolt. The whole administration became 
corrupt, and able viziers or ministers were often sacrificed to the 
hatred of the soldiery or the priests. The officers of the army 
became incapable under a system of promotion due not to merit 
but to bribes. In short, all the causes were at work which bring 
great empires to ruin. Suleyman's son and successor is sufficiently 
described as " Selim the Sot," but many of his father's able men 
were yet in office, and Turkish renown was fairly maintained for a 
time by the subjugation of Arabia and the conquest of Cyprus. 
The Turkish rule of the sea had a severe check in October, 15 71, 
when the battle of Lepanto, at the north side of the entrance to the 
Gulf of Corinth, was gained by a combined Papal, Venetian, and 
Spanish fleet, with a squadron of the Knights of Malta, under the 
young Don John of Austria, fresh from victory over the Moors in 
Spain. Into this famous conflict the allies brought 200 galleys and 
6 great galleasses against a Turkish fleet of 240 galleys and 60 
smaller vessels. The van of the allied vessels was led by Don 
John ; the centre, formed into a crescent, was commanded by the 
prince of Parma, whom we have seen in the Netherlands. A 
deadly fight went on for hours, until the Turkish centre was broken, 
with the boarding of the flag-ship and the death of the admiral. 
The right wing gave way, and the battle ended. About 130 Turkish 
vessels were captured, and over 90 were burnt or sunk. The allies 
lost 15 galleys and 8,000 men, while the Turks had nearly four 
times that number slain, and 15,000 Christian galley-slaves were 
liberated. The great Spanish writer Cervantes, author of Don 
Quixote, received three wounds in this battle, one of which disabled 
his left arm for life. The moral effect of the victory was great, but 
Turkish energy was not yet extinct, and in a few months a new 
fleet of 250 vessels was ready for action. About the same time the 
Turks received a severe lesson from the Russians, who almost 
destroyed an army of 80,000 men sent to protect workmen engaged 
in cutting a canal from the Don to the Volga, so as to give access 
from the Black Sea to the Caspian. The project, which involved 
an attack on Astrakhan, was then abandoned. Under Selim's son, 
Murad III. (1574— 1595), Georgia was conquered from Persia, and 
the reign of Mohammed III. O595-1603) was marked by a great 
victory over Austrian and Transylvanian forces. The empire, 



474 A History of the World 

however, continued to decline in power, and the Turk was no 
longer a terror to Europe. After some weak sultans, Murad IV. 
ruled from 1623 to 1640, and was the last warrior of the race of 
Othman, making a great campaign against Persia in which he 
recovered Bagdad, working in the trenches with his men, and 
slaying in single combat a gigantic champion sent forth from the 
town to challenge all comers. The chain-armour worn by Murad in 
this conflict, a beautiful work of interwoven steel and gold links, is 
still on view in the Treasury at Constantinople. Bagdad remains 
to this day in Turkish possession. Her conqueror, received in 
Constantinople with joyous shouts and saluting cannon, died at the 
age of 28, and the real government of the empire was henceforth 
chiefly in the hands of vezirs (viziers) or prime ministers. 



BOOK II. 

PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO FRENCH 
REVOLUTION (1648-1789). 

Chapter I. — The British Isles. 

The period now to be dealt with is one of vast importance in 
modern history. In France, under the rule of two kings, the length 
of whose successive reigns amounted to 131 years, a fact unique in 
all history, we have the age of costly wars and of misrule which led 
up directly to the great Revolution. In the British Isles we witness 
the final establishment, with a change of dynasty, of constitutional 
freedom. Between Great Britain, France, and Spain are waged 
wars closely connected with national aspirations and ambitions for 
maritime power, commercial extension, and the command of the 
New World and the East. We see the rise of the first British 
colonial empire beyond the Atlantic, and the loss of that dominion 
in a disastrous conflict, shortly after our acquisition, to the north 
of that territory, of the nucleus of another great colonial possession 
still loyal to the British crown. Our country, during this period, 
acquired the naval and maritime supremacy which, amid all modern 
changes, she yet retains. In Europe, under the rule of able and 
energetic sovereigns, two countries advanced from a position of 
comparative weakness and obscurity to that whereby, as Russia and 



The British Isles 475 

Prussia, they took rank amongst the great European powers. The 
application of steam as a driving force for machinery, in the later 
years of this momentous period, gave Great Britain the wealth 
derived from manufactures which enabled her to bear, in the 
succeeding age, the vast expenditure of the greatest contest, for her 
national existence and her commercial standing, which she has 
ever waged. 

In the British Isles, after the execution of Charles I., the form 
of government, for the only time in our history, was for 11 years 
that of a republic or commonwealth, in which, for nearly 10 years, 
from January, 1649, to September, 1658, power was chiefly in the 
hands of the great soldier and statesman, Oliver Cromwell. With 
his successive parliaments and constitutional experiments we are not 
here concerned. Backed by a victorious army of unrivalled discipline 
and valour, and supported on the seas by a fleet commanded by 
the immortal Blake, the Nelson of his time, Cromwell nobly sus- 
tained the honour of his country abroad. The warfare with the 
Dutch was partly due to support given by Holland to the Stuart 
cause, but chiefly to English jealousy of the great Dutch carrying- 
trade, expressed in the Navigation Act forbidding the importation 
of goods into England except in English vessels. In this conflict, 
Blake and Monck, commanding our fleets, fought in the Channel, 
and off the Dutch coast, with general success, against the famous 
Dutchmen Van Tromp and De Ruyter. Against Spain, Cromwell 
was impelled partly by hostility to a Catholic power, and probably 
more by a desire to shake her commercial position in the New 
World. In pursuit of this policy, Jamaica was captured in May, 
1655, and, two years later, Blake had a brilliant success in an attack 
on ships and powerful forts at Santa Cruz, in the Canaries. The 
Barbary corsairs of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were chastised in 
the first naval successes ever won by our ships in Mediterranean 
waters. A direct threat of war from Switzerland compelled the 
duke of Savoy to cease from his cruel persecution of the Protestants 
called Waldenses or Vaudois. Treasure-ships of Spain were captured 
off Cadiz, and at the siege of Dunkirk by the English and French 
in 1658, a Spanish relieving-army was routed in the " Battle of the 
Dunes," an action in which a brigade of Cromwell's infantry, 6,000 
strong, bore a brilliant part. At home, the two great efforts made 
by Charles II. to obtain his lawful power were utterly discomfited 
in Cromwell's victories of Dunbar and Worcester. Scotland, which 
had risen in the Stuart cause, was fairly conquered in the occupation 



476 A History of the World 

of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, and other 
towns. In Ireland, the Irish Catholics and English Protestant 
royalists, under the duke of Ormond, were thoroughly subdued in 
campaigns which included the terrible storming of Drogheda and 
Wexford, Kilkenny and Clonmel. The new conquest of the 
country was completed in 1652, and, outside Ulster, a new great 
confiscation of land took place, the Catholic landowners being 
driven into Connaught. The " Cromwellian settlement," an im- 
portant feature in the Irish land-question, bestowed the territory 
on the Puritan conquerors, and many thousands of Irish Catholics 
left the country for the Continent, to enlist in the French army, 
and form special brigades which fought against the British, not 
always without success, on Continental battle-fields. 

The worthless, witty, clever Charles II. reigned from 1660 to 
1685. The Episcopalians were triumphant ; the Puritans or Non- 
conformists were depressed, and, along with the Catholics, they 
were deprived for a long period of full civil and religious freedom 
by legislation which excluded them from municipal and other 
offices, and, in the case of Catholics, from sitting in Parliament. 
In Scotland, the Covenanters, as zealous supporters of Presby- 
terianism and opponents of episcopacy, were severely persecuted 
by fine, imprisonment, torture, and death, under two apostates from 
the Presbyterians, the duke of Lauderdale, and Sharp, archbishop 
of St. Andrews. Provoked to armed resistance, the Presbyterians, 
in 1679, murdered the archbishop on Magus Moor, in Fifeshire ; 
defeated the royal dragoons, under Graham of Claverhouse (after- 
wards Viscount Dundee), at Drumclog, in Lanarkshire ; and were 
then utterly beaten by the duke of Monmouth (one of Charles II. 's 
natural sons) at Bothwell Bridge, on the Clyde, near Glasgow. In 
Ireland, some of the confiscated lands were restored to the royalist 
Catholics, but two-thirds of the arable soil remained in the posses- 
sion of Protestant landlords, and the coming misery of Ireland was 
rendered sure in the mingling of religious hostility with the bitter- 
ness due to the " land-question." In civil affairs the reign of 
Charles, soiled by the judicial murders of Lord William Russell and 
Algernon Sidney, was honourably distinguished by the Habeas 
Corpus Act securing the personal liberty of the subject against the 
Crown, and by a decision, in 1670, of Chief-Justice Vaughan, of 
the Common Pleas, which set jurors free from coercion by 
judges. The British sovereign was a mere pensioner of Louis of 
France, and naval wars with the Dutch, partly due to a French 



The British Isles 477 

alliance, included the disgrace of 1667, when the enemy burnt 
British ships at Chatham, and battles in which our naval com- 
manders, the duke of Albemarle (Monck), Prince Rupert, the earl 
of Sandwich, and the duke of York (James II.), were not always 
victorious over Opdam, De Ruyter, and De Witt. 

James II. (1685-1688), cruel, faithless, stupid, hard-hearted 
despot as he was, had a short term of power, according to the 
prediction of his shrewd brother Charles. The prompt suppression 
of the wicked and foolish Monmouth rebellion, disgraced as the 
royal cause was by Jeffreys in the " Bloody Assize," had strengthened 
the position of a monarch who, from the day of his accession, had 
broken the laws in levying customs-duties and excise-imposts without 
consent of Parliament, and in attending openly the Catholic service 
of the mass. The statutes were then trodden under foot in the 
admission of Catholics to the army and civil service ; the revival of 
the Court of High Commission in ecclesiastical affairs ; the reception 
of a Papal nuncio ; the allowance of Catholic worship, and the 
appointment of a Jesuit as a member of the Privy-Council. In 
Scotland, the persecution of the Covenanters was continued by 
Claverhouse and two renegade Presbyterians, the earl of Perth 
and Lord Melfort, who had become Catholics to please the king. 
The insolent and tyrannical treatment of two chief bulwarks of the 
throne, the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, in the lawless 
appointment of Catholics to prominent offices ; the assumption of 
absolute power in the issue of two " Declarations of Indulgence," 
suspending the penal laws against Nonconformists ; the fruitless 
prosecution of the " Seven Bishops " for libel ; and, above all, the 
birth of a son to James by his second wife, Mary d'Este of Modena 
— a son who would be brought up in the Catholic faith, and would, 
if he lived, succeed to the throne — caused some leading Whig 
nobles, in the name of the nation, to summon to their aid William 
of Orange, the Dutch Stadtholder. His landing at Torbay with an 
army in November, 1688, led to no conflict save with a few Irish 
Catholic troops brought over by James. William's wife, Mary, was 
a Protestant princess, daughter of James by his first wife, Anne 
Hyde, and the helpless sovereign, for whom none of his English 
subjects would fight, retired perforce to France. 

The new sovereign, William III. (1689-1702), reigning jointly 
with Mary until her death in 1694, but from the first controlling 
affairs as a constitutional monarch, was one of the greatest statesmen 
of the age, and an able and heroic commander in war. The main 



478 A History of the World 

object of his foreign policy was to baffle the ambitious schemes of 
Louis of France, and in this he had much success. The " Bill of 
Rights" (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701) finally secured 
British liberties. The House of Commons gained absolute control 
of taxation and expenditure, and of the standing-army recently 
established. A Protestant succession to the throne was secured 
in the assignment of the regal office to the House of Hanover, in 
default of heirs from Anne, sister-in-law and successor of the 
childless William. In Scotland, the cause of the Jacobites (or 
supporters of James II.) was ruined by the death of Dundee at 
Killiecrankie, and the repulse of the Highlanders at Dunkeld. The 
Presbyterian system of religion was fully restored. In Ireland, the 
efforts of the Catholics and of James were baffled in the glorious 
defence of Londonderry, from April to July, 1689 ; at the battle of 
the Boyne, July 1st, 1690 ; by the defeat of Irish and French troops 
at Athlone and Aughrim, and by the capture of Limerick in 1691. 
The victory of the Protestant cause was disgraced by the severe 
penal laws passed in the Irish Parliament, interfering with the 
freedom of Catholics in many important functions of life, in the 
holding of land, the education of children, in marriage, and guardian- 
ship. A new great confiscation of land confirmed the " Protestant 
supremacy " of a minority of the inhabitants, and Irish prosperity 
from tillage, grazing, and manufactures was rendered impossible by 
oppressive commercial legislation excluding her products from 
English and colonial markets. Ireland was at last at peace, under 
the heel of a conqueror, and had a rest which was the apathy of 
dumb despair. The reign of William III. is also notable for the 
establishment of freedom of the press, in relief from the censorship 
which had existed, in a severe form, in Tudor days, and had been 
maintained even under the " Long Parliament," in spite of Milton's 
noble protest in his pamphlet Areopagitiai. It was in 1695, with 
the expiry and non-renewal of the Licensing Act of 1662, that the 
press became free from a meddling and oppressive control exercised 
by government-officials. In Scotland, an important system of 
national elementary education arose in 1696, when an Act required 
every parish to have its own school with a master paid by the 
" heritors," or proprietors of land and houses, and supervised by 
the presbytery. William III. began the practice of choosing his 
ministers mainly from the party dominant in the House of Commons, 
and thus arose the " ministry " or executive-government of modern 
days, with its chief members forming the Cabinet, being, in fact, 



The British Isles 



479 



a committee of leading members of the two Houses, selected from 
the political party which commands a majority in the Commons. 
It was during the 18th century that the Cabinet became, as it 
remains, marked by unanimity on chief questions, unity in action, 
and full responsibility for legislation and administration. Sir Robert 
Walpole is usually regarded as the first " Prime Minister " or 
" Premier," in the modern sense, from his having introduced and 
enforced unanimity in the governing body. 

The warfare of Queen Anne's reign (1702-17 14) will appear, 
as will that of William's reign, in the account of Louis of France. 
The Anglican Church was benefited by the royal generosity which 
created the fund known as " Queen Anne's Bounty," in surrendering 
the "first-fruits," or first-year's income of new incumbents of livings, 
and the "tenths," or a tithe of the annual income of benefices, 
paid to the Pope before the Reformation, and annexed to the 
Crown by Henry VIII. The fund thus created is still employed 
for increasing the incomes of the poorer clergy and in the advance 
of money for the rebuilding of parsonages. We may note that 
Queen Anne was the last British sovereign who exercised the right 
of veto on legislation, in refusing her assent to a Militia Bill for 
Scotland which had passed both Houses. In 1708 the Act was 
passed which provides that every member of the House of Commons 
who accepts any office of profit under the Crown, unless it be a 
higher army-commission, must resign his seat and offer himself 
for re-election. The constituencies have thus a check on the corrupt 
use of offices by the Crown, in their power of rejecting a man 
whose appointment they may disapprove. The important civil 
event was the Parliamentary Union of England and Scotland by 
the Act of 1707. There was much discontent in the northern 
kingdom, from just jealousy of restrictions on Scottish trade and 
from other causes, and in 1704 the queen had assented to an Act 
of the Scottish Parliament for separating the crowns on her decease. 
In 1705 the English Parliament passed resolutions severely restrict- 
ing Scottish trade with England and France, and the Border-towns 
were fortified. The Union Act, passed with much difficulty, and 
with no small use of bribes judiciously administered to members 
of the Scottish Parliament, averted civil war, and for the first time 
brought the two countries into intimate connection. The two 
united kingdoms became "Great Britain": 16 Scottish peers, 
elected for each Parliament by the Scottish peers as a body, sat 
in the House of Lords ; 45 members of the Commons were assigned 



480 A History of the World 

as the representative body of Scotland : the established Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland was maintained : the northern country kept 
her own laws and customs relating to property and private rights, 
and her Court of Session and other tribunals. All rights of trade, 
free intercourse, and citizenship were henceforth alike for Scottish 
and English subjects. This great legislative measure was the real 
beginning of modern Scottish history. It marks the entrance of 
Scotland into the trade-competition of the age, and it brought her, 
to her own great profit, into direct contact with the New World. 
An end was soon made of the proverbial poverty of Scotland, and 
the energy of her people enabled her to attain a very high position 
among the nations of the world. 

Under George I. (1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760) the 
system of government by Parliament became fully established, the 
House of Commons being at this time largely influenced by bribery 
in the shape of places, pensions, peerages, inferior titles, orders of 
honour, and direct money-payments, and by control of elections 
in the small places called " pocket-boroughs." A Whig oligarchy 
thus had a large share of rule, subject to public opinion as expressed 
in the newspapers and otherwise. The two first sovereigns of the 
House of Brunswick (or Hanover) cared more for Hanover than 
for England, and the connection with that country was very harmful 
in drawing Great Britain into Continental struggles. The rebellion 
of 1 7 15 was a miserable failure, ending in the ignominious flight of 
James Edward Stuart, the " elder Pretender," son of James II. Some 
fighting occurred at Preston in Lancashire, and some noble heads 
fell on Tower Hill. The rebellion of 1745 was more important, 
but had, probably, no real chance of success. " Bonnie Prince 
Charlie," a really charming young man for a picnic or a dance, who 
died a bloated drunkard in 1788, became the hero of many Jacobite 
songs. The respectable side of the matter was the admirable 
devotion of the Highland peasantry to a ruined cause. The dis- 
graceful side was the savage cruelty of the victor of Culloden, 
" Butcher " Cumberland, a royal duke, to the people who had 
supported the cause. The statesmanlike aspect is seen in the 
wisdom of the first William Pitt (earl of Chatham), who repaired 
the evil of the past in enlisting Highlanders to fight for the House 
of Hanover, and formed the first of the noble regiments whose 
colours have so often waved in glory on our fields of battle in many 
lands. The country was pacified, and laid open for the traffic of 
peace and trade, and for the admiring tourists of later times, by 



The British Isles 481 

the creation of excellent roads. The ministry of Walpole, from 
1 72 1 to 1742, was valuable to the country from a policy which was 
marked by a steady love of peace, by economy, and by non-inter- 
ference with the progress of national industry and wealth. The 
revenue grew, and the public debt declined, under his wise fiscal 
management. 

Religious freedom for Protestant dissenters or Nonconformists — 
the Presbyterians of England, the Independents or Congrega- 
tionalists, the Baptists, and the Quakers or Society of Friends- 
had its rise in the Toleration Act of 1689, allowing them to worship 
freely in their own way, on condition of taking the oaths of alle- 
giance and supremacy, making a declaration against the Roman 
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and assenting to the doctrine 
of the Trinity. Two oppressive Acts of Charles II. 's reign — the 
period of royalist and religious reaction — were thus repealed, except 
as regarded Romanists and Unitarians. Under Walpole, civil 
freedom was accorded in a large measure by the passing, from 
1728 onwards, of an annual Act of Indemnity, securing Protestant 
dissenters who held municipal offices from the penalties to which 
they were liable under the Corporation Act of 1661 and the 
Test Act of 1673. The most important event of the early Georgian 
period was beyond doubt the famous religious revival called the 
Wesleyan Movement or Methodism. The Anglican Church had 
sunk into a lethargic condition, and little religious life was found 
except in the sects of Nonconformists. The prelates and the clergy 
were to a large extent absentees from their proper spheres of 
labour, their dioceses and parishes. Infidelity and immorality 
had spread greatly among the higher class of the laity and the 
lower part of the community, and the lives of many of the clergy 
were, at the least, very indecorous. The Methodists — a derisive term 
at first, applied to them by opponents who ridiculed their strict 
rules of conduct — arose at Oxford, where John Wesley, who was 
born in 1703 and died in 1791, a resident fellow, ordained as priest 
in the Anglican Church in 1728, gathered in his rooms a few friends 
for private worship. Among these enthusiasts were William Law, 
afterwards author of The Serious Call, and George Whitefield, 
who became one of the most powerful and influential of modern 
preachers, converting large numbers of the toiling masses of the 
people. In 1738 the movement was opened in London, with Wesley 
and Whitefield as the chief religious orators, and Charles Wesley, 
younger brother of John, as the writer of very popular hymns. 



482 A History of the World 

The Church declined to have anything to do with John Wesley 
and his efforts for religious reform, and he was thus obliged to 
become a " schismatic." His wonderful genius for organisation 
was displayed in his founding and development of a new religious 
body — the Wesleyans or Methodists — legally incorporated in 1784. 
The doctrines are, in the main, those of the moderate adherents 
of the Anglican Church, and, with various sects separated from 
the original body, the Methodists form now the most numerous, 
wealthy, respectable, and intelligent body of Protestant Noncon- 
formists in England, the United States, and the British Colonies. 
A great reform of public morals took place ; the clergy of the 
Established Church were aroused to a new life, and a healthy 
rivalry began which ended in the rise, within the Church, of the 
party known as Evangelicals or Low Churchmen. 

Chapter II. — The Wars of Louis XIV. 

The reign of Louis XIV. ushered in a series of warlike contests, 
continuing, with some intervals, through the latter half of the 17th, 
the whole of the 18th, and the earlier years of the 19th century. 
These struggles have no parallel in mediaeval or modern history for 
the importance of the issues involved, the number of the combatants 
engaged, the power and resources of the belligerent nations, the 
skill of the commanders, and the interest attached to the chief 
battles fought by land and sea. Dealing here only with the wars 
prior to the French Revolution, we find that our own country was 
engaged in five great wars, varying in length from 7 to 12 years. 
These contests were on a larger scale than any previous ones in 
our history, entailing vast expenditure at the time, and incurring a 
portion of the enormous burden of our national debt. The first of 
these wars, waged from 1689 to 1697, was due to our last revolution, 
and in this contest William III. vindicated British independence of 
foreign control against the king of France. The second was that 
of the Spanish Succession, from 1702 to 17 13, settling the effort of 
France to become predominant in Europe. The third war, from 
1739 to 1748, is called that of the Austrian Succession, and was 
one in which we took part on the Continent with reference to the 
Hanoverian dominions, but it began, on our part, as a war with 
Spain concerning her claim to the " right of search " of vessels along 
the " Spanish main " in America, and it was, to this extent, a struggle 
for commerce in the New World. The contest turned into a war 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 483 

with France, in which the French and British colonists in America 
fought against each other, while we were also at war in southern 
India with the French for supremacy in that quarter of the world. 
The fourth, or Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763, was one in 
which we fought on the Continent again for Hanover, and against 
France and Spain in the East and West. In India and North 
America we were engaged with France, and at the Philippine 
Islands and Cuba with Spain. The fifth was the American Revolu- 
tionary War, from 1775 to 1783, in which we fought against our 
own colonies, Spain, Holland, and France, the struggle with the 
three foreign nations being mainly a desperate naval contest. The 
period is thus chiefly one of rivalry with France, in a kind of renewal 
of the Hundred Years' War of our Plantagenet days, after we had 
been, during the 16th and most of the 17th centuries, to a large 
extent on friendly terms with that country. We were fighting 
France for supremacy in North America and in India during all 
the middle part of the 18th century, carrying on the contest there 
even while, in Europe, we were at peace, under the Treaty of Aix- 
la-Chapelle, for the eight years between 1748 and 1756. In the 
war of 1776-1783 the French aided our revolted colonists in revenge 
for their loss of Canada and of their chance of dominion in India. 
It was thus a contest for the possession of power in the New World 
that was waged between 1740 and 1783, and it ended decisively in 
favour of Great Britain. 

Louis XIV. (1643-1715) was but five years of age when he 
succeeded his father, Louis XIII., and the regency was held by 
his mother, Anna, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, called by the 
French " Anne of Austria," meaning " of Hapsburg," as belonging 
to the Spanish branch of the Austrian house. The chief minister 
was Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian naturalised in France, and a 
political and diplomatic pupil of the great Richelieu. This able 
man was a consummate intriguer, a supple courtier of the smoothest 
manners, and a good administrator except in financial affairs. The 
successes of France in the Thirty Years' War, during the first five 
years of the reign, have been given. The monument of Mazarin's 
ministry, which continued, with some brief intervals of banishment, 
until his death in 1661, was the gaining of Alsace for France by 
the Treaty of Munster in 1648. The wretched civil war called 
the Fronde, from 1648 to 1653, was in part a final attempt of 
French nobles to recover lost authority, and it ended in the ex- 
tinction of parliamentary influence and the establishment of royal 



484 A History of the World 

power. Matters had gone badly in the war with Spain w r hich 
had arisen during the Thirty Years' War, but the French cause was 
restored in 1658 by Turenne's success, aided as we have seen by 
some of Cromwell's troops, at the battle of the Dunes, and the 
retaking of Dunkirk from the Spaniards. The contest ended in 
1659 with the Peace of the Pyrenees, cemented by the marriage 
of Louis with the Infanta of Spain, Maria Theresa, eldest daughter 
of Philip IV. In 1661, on Mazarin's death, Louis assumed the 
direction of affairs, in his 23rd year, and at once showed himself 
master of the position. This celebrated man, styled by Bolingbroke 
" the best actor of majesty that ever filled a throne," and described 
by Macaulay as " a consummate master of kingcraft — of all the 
arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince, 
and best hide his defects," was rather what the French call " gran- 
diose " than great. Never did a monarch more thoroughly impress 
and impose himself on his subjects. Throughout a tenure of power 
held for 54 years, Louis never, even amidst disaster, disgrace, and 
ruin, failed to command the reverential regard of his people. Never 
did a European sovereign demand and receive a submission, in 
outward demeanour and in practical obedience to the word of 
command,' so closely resembling that yielded to an Oriental sultan. 
The truth is that, with despotic power, he was not compelled, by 
the least resistance, to make a cruel use thereof towards his own 
subjects, and it was only under the influence of religious bigotry 
that his absolutism became disgraced by tyranny. His head was 
cool and clear ; his energy and resolution cannot be denied ; his 
manners were dignified and graceful, if somewhat pompous. His 
glory consists mainly in the skilful appropriation of the merits of 
others, though to him belongs the credit of a keen eye for genius 
and ability in men of every class, and of a politic generosity in 
rewarding their efforts. Assuredly no man was ever more ably 
served in his capacity as his own chief minister in all affairs. His 
generals and diplomatists were the ablest of the day. The renown 
of " Louis le Grand " is closely associated with the achievements 
of French literature and art, with the names of Corneille, Racine, 
and Moliere, and with the fame of such orators and divines as 
Bossuet and Fenelon, Massillon and Bourdaloue. 

On assuming power, Louis at once prepared for the execution 
of his ambitious schemes. Colbert, one of the greatest French 
statesmen, had control of the finances from 1662 until his death in 
1683. He had been strongly recommended by Mazarin, and 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 485 

amply justified his selection for office by a restoration of affairs in 
the punishment of fraudulent " farmers " of the revenue, and the 
introduction of order and reform. Under his able direction the 
whole administration was rearranged. Agriculture, commerce, 
colonial affairs, received unremitting attention. French skill and 
industry in manufactures were fostered. New roads and canals 
were made, including the canal of Languedoc which joined the 
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Deserted and ruined harbours 
were restored and fortified ; Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort became 
great naval arsenals. The creation of a powerful fleet was essential, 
and in 20 years from his assumption of rule Louis had a truly 
formidable naval force, including 100 ships of the line, many of 
which carried 100 guns or more, and manned by 60,000 disciplined 
sailors, a greater force than England and Holland together could 
display. Under Duquesne, French squadrons swept the seas free of 
the corsairs of Algiers and Tripoli, and against Algiers were used, 
for the first time in war, floating bomb-batteries, by whose fire part 
of the town was crushed and burnt. French squadrons and cruisers 
were, in the course of the wars waged by Louis, to be found in 
many seas ; damaging British property on the coasts of Newfoundland 
and Jamaica; capturing British and Dutch merchantmen on the 
high seas ; attacking the Spaniards at Carthagena, in South America. 
The war-department was under the control of Louvois, from 1668 
until his death in 169 1. To this strong-willed, brutal, autocratic 
personage the French monarch was largely indebted for his successes 
in war. This consummate organiser and administrator of armies, 
never surpassed, even by Napoleon, as the creator and maintainer of 
a vast military machine, made a revolution in the art of training, 
distributing, equipping, and provisioning land-forces. He set on 
foot a standing army, commanded by officers recruited by compulsion 
from among the nobility. The drilling of the infantry was entrusted 
to the famous officer Martinet, whose name became proverbial for 
stern discipline. Conspicuous in the ranks of the formidable new 
array were the Royal Guards, the renowned "Household Troops," 
the finest corps ever seen up to that day, mainly composed of young 
nobles. Commissariat and hospital services were established ; 
meritorious service was recognised, and disabled valour was rewarded, 
by the conferring of orders of decoration and in the comfortable 
retirement of the newly founded Hotel des Invalides. In Vauban, 
Louis possessed one of the most honest and most virtuous men of 
the time, gentle, kindly, blunt in manners, sound in judgment, of 
32 



486 A History of the World 

courage unsurpassed, ever successful, and never unduly elated by 
success. He was the greatest of all military engineers. Left a 
destitute orphan at ten years of age, indebted for food and education 
to a village cure, enlisted as a private soldier under Conde', this 
extraordinary man rose, by sheer ability and force of character, to 
be Marshal of France. This father of the science of fortification 
first introduced the method of approach by parallels, and carried the 
art of fortifying, attacking, and defending towns to a degree of 
perfection before unknown. During his long career Vauban re- 
fortified over a hundred ancient citadels, erected more than 30 new 
ones, and had the direction of about 50 sieges. The kingdom was 
surrounded by a cordon of fortresses, especially on the eastern and 
northern frontiers, a triple line of strongholds which included the 
citadels of Strasburg, Lille, and Metz, impregnable to the artillery of 
that age. 

The projects of Louis comprised the extension of the frontiers 
of France to the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine, and, ultimately, 
the acquirement of European predominance in the annexation, by 
the House of Bourbon, of all the Spanish dominions. For these 
ends the blood and resources of France were lavished, and, in the 
prosecution of this purpose, not the least respect was ever shown to 
the most solemn obligations of public faith. Every promise was 
broken, every treaty violated, without scruple, as soon as the moment 
for action arrived. The first occasion for war came with the death, 
in 1665, of the French king's father-in-law, Philip IV. of Spain. 
Louis then claimed, in right of his wife, much of the Spanish 
Netherlands, and in 1667 he marched into Flanders with about 
50,000 troops under the great general, Turenne. No resistance 
could be made by the small Spanish force ; town after town was 
taken, and all the territory afterwards known as French Flanders 
was occupied, including Uouai and the strong fortress of Lille. 
Early in 1668 came the conquest of Franche-Comte, or the " county " 
of Burgundy, as distinct from the duchy. This territory, corre- 
sponding to the modern departments of Doubs, Haute-Saone, and 
Jura, was called "free" (franche) as not being French. It had 
passed from France, under Charles VIII., to Germany, and came 
to Spain on the abdication of Charles V. Its peculiar privileges 
made it almost a republic. At this aggression " drowsy Europe 
awoke," in the words of Voltaire. Germany began to stir; the 
Swiss were alarmed ; Holland trembled for herself, and Spain 
applied to her for help. Louis' military power was then only 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 487 

partially developed, and he was forced to recoil by the famous 
Triple Alliance, of England, Holland, and Sweden, concluded at 
the Hague between Sir William Temple and John de Witt, one of 
the chief statesmen of Europe. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 
May, 1668, deprived France of the Burgundian territory which had 
been seized, but left her in possession of the Flanders fortresses. 
Bent on revenge, Louis bought the neutrality of England by the 
infamous secret Treaty of Dover concluded with Charles II., and 
then again took the field. 

Holland, the chief object of the French king's hostility, was at 
this time torn by two factions, one the republicans, under John and 
Cornelius de Witt ; the other, a semi-royalist party, supporting 
William of Orange (afterwards William III. of England), in depressing 
the aristocracy, or aristocratic republicans, who were in favour of 
an oligarchical rule like that of Venice. Sweden had also been 
bribed into neutrality, and in May, 1672, a great French army, under 
Conde, Turenne, Luxembourg, and Vauban, poured into Holland. 
Louis was there in person, heading a picked corps of 30,000 men, 
including the " Household." To this wicked invasion the Dutch, 
with magazines almost devoid of stores, could oppose only 25,000 
ill-trained militia, under a prince of 22 years, in feeble health. 
Most of the country was speedily overrun, and Holland seemed 
to be in a desperate condition, but the old heroic spirit was not 
extinct. The brothers De Witt, who desired terms cf peace, were 
killed by a furious mob at the Hague. William of Orange was 
made Stadtholder, and the French forces were driven from much 
of the country, by the cutting of the dykes, and the turning of 
Holland into a sea out of which Amsterdam stood up as a vast 
fortress, the symbol of unshakable firmness and resolve. William 
had already used diplomacy with good effect in forming a new' 
coalition against the French monarch, and the Dutch received 
aid from the Spanish Netherlands, from the emperor (Leopold I.), 
and the elector of Brandenburg. Turenne fought the imperialists 
in Westphalia ; William faced Luxembourg in Holland. De Ruyter, 
on the sea, fought bravely against combined French and English 
squadrons. In the end, after much cruel devastation of the country, 
the French were forced to quit Holland and make the Rhine-coun- 
tries the main scene of warfare. In 1674 and the following year, 
Turenne was gaining his last laurels in brilliant work against the 
imperialists in Alsace, where he was faced by the great Italian 
strategist and tactician Montecuculli, one of the best generals 



488 A History of the World 

of the age, until his own death by cannon-shot in July, 1675. 
Meanwhile, Conde and William of Orange had met, in August, 
1674, at the great battle of Senef, near Mons, where both leaders 
freely exposed their lives in a desperate drawn contest. Conde, 
succeeding Turenne in his command on the Rhine, had much 
success, and on his retirement the war was continued for France 
by generals of his and Turenne's training, of whom the ablest 
was the due de Luxembourg. In April, 1677, William suffered 
defeat at Mont-Cassel, near St. Omer. In the Mediterranean, the 
French fleet, under Duquesne, fairly held its own against the Spanish, 
aided by Dutch vessels under De Ruyter, who received a mortal 
wound after a glorious career. In August, 1678, the war ended 
with the Peace of Nimeguen, leaving France in possession of many 
of the Flanders fortresses, and of Franche-Comte'. 

Louis was by this time at the height of his power and fame. 
The Empire, Spain, and Holland disbanded the forces specially 
raised for the struggle, but the French army was maintained, and 
with trickery backed by a display of force Louis gained more 
territory in the Rhine-land, including the " free city " of Strasburg, 
at once refortified by Vauban, who erected works commanding 
the passage of the Rhine at Kehl. The French monarch, as the 
bully and tyrant of Europe, had his troops and diplomatists inter- 
meddling in almost every country, and bore himself with an 
insolence and arrogance which aroused the awe of the weak and 
the indignation of the strong. In 1664 a French brigade, including 
a picked body of nobles, had aided Austria in Hungary against 
Turkish attacks. The Austrian army, commanded by Montecuculli, 
fought against the famous vizier Kouprougli, and the French con- 
tingent won great fame by their valour, in the battle of St. Gothard, 
on the Raab. In the following year a body of Frenchmen helped 
Portugal in her war of liberation against Spain, and contributed 
to her victory over the Spaniards at the battle of Villa-Viciosa, 
which firmly established the independence of the Portuguese. The 
king of Spain had, at an even earlier date, been forced to grant 
precedence to the French ambassador over the Spanish envoy at 
foreign courts. In a quarrel with the Pope concerning an insult 
offered to the French envoy at Rome, Louis obtained full satis- 
faction, and forced the Holy Father to restore certain territories 
to minor Italian princes. In 1669 men-of-war were sent by Louis 
to help Candia (Crete) against the Turks, and a French nobleman, 
La Feuillade, headed over 300 fellow-countrymen of his class in 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 489 

what was known as " the last of the Crusades." At a later date, 
French emissaries were engaged in rousing Hungary against Austria. 
At the Turkish court, Louis' ambassadors had the great distinction 
of being allowed to sit on a sofa in the Sultan's presence. In 1684 
Genoa was bombarded as a punishment for supplying munitions 
of war to Algiers, and for building warships for Spain, and the 
republic had to seek peace on humiliating terms. The Doge and 
four chief senators were compelled to go to Versailles, and the 
Genoese had to retain the same ruler in power, though the 
immemorial law of the state deprived of office any Doge who 
should quit the city even for an hour. The fame of the French 
king extended to remote regions of Asia, and in 1684 and 1686 
his pride was nattered by the arrival of embassies from Siam, where 
the prime-minister, a Greek named Phaulkon, sought the favour 
of France in his dread of English and Dutch power in the East. 
When another Pope, Innocent XI. (1676-1689), a good and able 
man, dared to remonstrate with Louis for rousing the Turks against 
the Empire, he was insulted by the dispatch to Rome of a new 
French envoy attended by a strong armed escort. In 1688, in 
a quarrel with the same Pope concerning the electorate of Cologne, 
Louis took possession of Avignon, in the south-east of France, which 
had been in Papal hands since 1307. 

We now turn to other aspects of Louis the Great's character 
and administration. In his relations with the female sex, he was 
as shamelessly immoral as his pensioner, Charles II., taking about 
in the same carriage, amid the splendour of his festivities, his queen 
Maria Theresa and two of his mistresses, in full sight of an army 
under review and of a crowd of spectators. Religious bigotry was 
the cause of the most shameful and pernicious doings of the reign, 
apart from the wicked wars of ambition which, before the close 
of the period, brought financial exhaustion of far-reaching conse- 
quences. It was in 1682 that Louis finally took up his abode at 
Versailles, and maintained the splendid court and elaborate etiquette 
which became the admiration of all the high-born and wealthy 
flunkeydom of Europe in that and succeeding times. In 1683 his 
queen, Maria Theresa, and Colbert died. Two years later Louis 
married Madame de Maintenon, widow of the poet Scarron, a lady 
who won the king's favour by her devoted care of his two sons 
by Madame de Montespan. She acquired a great influence over 
him, being herself governed by the Jesuits. Cold in heart and 
severe in morals, she was devoted to strict propriety, orthodoxy, and 



490 A History of the World 

the Church, and to her is partly due the religious persecution which 
is the great blot on French history in this period. After the fall 
of La Rochelle in the time of Richelieu, and the capture of all other 
Protestant strongholds, the Huguenots, left defenceless as they were, 
bereft of all political power, and entirely dependent on the will of 
the court for the exercise of their religion, had not, for many years, 
been subject to interference. This happy state of affairs came to 
an end when Louis listened to Madame de Maintenon and his 
famous Jesuit confessor Lachaise, though they were not respon- 
sible for the worst cruelties perpetrated. The Huguenots were 
gradually deprived of civil rights under the renewed persecution, 
and then attempts at extirpation began. In 1681 bodies of 
mounted troops (dragoons) began the infamous " Dragonnades." 
Accompanied by monks, these men passed through the country, and 
being quartered in Protestant villages and houses, strove to force 
the inhabitants, by outrage and plunder, to renounce their faith. 
The places of worship were demolished, and the preachers were put 
to death. Many of the " heretics " made insincere professions of 
Catholic " orthodoxy," and were outwardly reconciled to " Mother 
Church." Hundreds of thousands fled to Switzerland, Holland, 
Germany, and England. At last, in October, 16S5, the French 
monarch, pious creature as he was, resolved to do what in him 
lay to complete the good work of conversion to the true faith. All 
rights of Protestant worship were formally withdrawn by the Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, a step in which the war-minister Louvois 
was largely concerned. The Huguenots had been already forbidden 
to practise in professions and several important trades, or to hold 
any public office. By a royal edict all privileges were now swept 
away. The churches were pulled down, the worship was suppressed, 
the ministers were banished, and the Protestant laity were forbidden, 
under severe penalties, to leave the country. They were to stay in 
France, forsooth, in order to do the work of slaves, and to furnish 
material for slaughter in the " Grand Monarque's " campaigns. 
Disobedience to this atrocious decree was visited by imprisonment, 
torture, outrage, and death. The Huguenots sought safety and 
freedom of conscience abroad, and in a few years France was 
deprived for ever of over half a million of her best subjects, including 
professional men of high ability and culture, and crowds of indus- 
trious and skilful artisans. London was indebted to this flight for 
the establishment of a long-flourishing silk-manufacture at Spitalfields, 
and our country profited in the introduction or improvement of 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 491 

work in tapestry, glass-making, pottery, dyeing, and paper-making. 
William of Orange, when he became king of England, received the 
valuable support of Huguenots in military, political, and financial 
affairs. They fought beside him at the Boyne, and in other ways 
strengthened the Protestant cause in Ireland. Under Queen Anne, 
London alone contained 30 Huguenot churches, and the number was 
only diminished, towards the close of the 18th century, by the absorp- 
tion of Huguenots in the Anglican Church and other religious bodies. 
To Louis XIV. Great Britain owes many leading families among the 
professional classes, and the adornment of her annals by the achieve- 
ments of men and women bearing the honoured names of Chenevix, 
Trench, and Romaine in the Church ; of Ligonier in the army ; 
of Romilly in the law ; of Martineau in literature and philosophy ; 
of Miliars in art ; with the Boileaus, Bosanquets, De Crespignys, 
I)u Canes, Layards, and many other noted families. The fury 
of the persecutors, inflamed by loss due only to their own suicidal 
policy, found vent in new outrages. The marriages of Protestants 
were declared null. Their children were robbed of the right of 
inheritance, and forcibly incarcerated in religious houses. The 
preachers were everywhere put to death. In the south of France 
many thousands of Protestants fled to the Cevennes mountains, and 
worshipped according to their fathers' faith. A fanatical energy was 
displayed, and the " Camisards," as the rebellious Huguenots were 
called from the camise or blouse worn by the peasantry, maintained 
a struggle for many years, with much success, against the forces 
of the monarchy. Prophets and seers roused the people to frenzy, 
and the insurgents were aided by the people of many towns. After the 
repulse or destruction of several detachments of royal troops, Marshal 
Montrevel, a renegade Huguenot, was sent, in 1703, with 60,000 men, 
who shot down or executed large numbers of the mountaineers and 
destroyed some hundreds of villages. The Camisards, in return, 
slew scores of priests and burned 200 churches in the diocese of 
Nimes. Their brave and able leader, Jean Cavalier, was aided 
by supplies of necessaries furnished from Nimes, Montpellier, and 
other towns, and by cannon cast by the citizens from the bells ot 
the burned churches. In April, 1704, Marshal Villars, one of the 
best generals of the day, was dispatched to take the command, 
and his mingling of conciliation with prompt severity and skilful 
action at last suppressed the revolt. A free pardon was given to 
all who surrendered, and all prisoners were released on swearing 
allegiance. Every person taken in arms was shot at once, and flying 



492 A History of the World 

columns broke down the revolt in every quarter. In the same 
year Cavalier accepted the amnesty, and peace was for a brief time 
restored. Another outbreak, in 1705, due to the severity of the 
duke of Berwick (a natural son of James II. of England), ended 
in the desolation of the whole region and the slaughter or banish- 
ment of most of the surviving inhabitants. Such were the blessings 
due to " orthodoxy " under Louis XIV. 

William of Orange again roused Europe against Louis, in 1686, 
forming the League of Augsburg, which embraced the emperor and 
several German princes, Sweden, and Spain. The French armies 
took the field, numbering in all, in the course of this new war, from 
1688 to 1697, over 400,000 men, a prodigious force in that age. 
In 1688 Germany was invaded by the French in great force, and 
then one of the great crimes of modern history was perpetrated in 
the frightful devastation of the Rhenish Palatinate. Town after 
town was captured by Vauban's operations. Early in 1689, in the 
depth of winter, the French generals gave notice to the people of 
the many flourishing, well-built towns, of countless villages, and 
of more than 50 castles, that they must leave their homes, or become 
the victims of fire and sword. Men, women, the aged, the young, 
fled in haste. Some wandered up and down, others took refuge in 
neighbouring countries, and the French troops sacked and destroyed 
everything. Mannheim and Heidelberg were first plundered and 
burnt. The electoral palaces, with the houses of the townspeople, 
were destroyed. The tombs of the emperors at Speier were broken 
open, the silver coffins stolen, and the bones of the dead were left 
scattered on the ground. Europe was aghast at the foul deeds of 
ruthless ambition ; the French officers themselves blushed to be the 
instruments of such deadly wrong. It was Louvois who gave the 
evil counsel ; it was Louis who acted thereon, and on their brows 
history has stamped an ineffaceable brand of infamy. The German 
army was led by the duke of Lorraine, who had aided Sobieski, as 
we shall see, against the Turks at Vienna, in 1683, and by the 
elector of Brandenburg. Bonn and Mayence were retaken from 
the invaders after severe sieges. The " Grand Alliance " was formed 
in 1689 by William of Orange, now king of England, who united 
his new realm and Flolland to the League of Augsburg, which the 
duke of Savoy had joined in 1687. By sea and land the contest was 
waged with variations of success. In 1690 the French admiral 
Tourville gained a victory off Beachy Head over the English and 
Dutch fleets, and our coast was then insulted by the burning of 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 493 

Teignmouth. This disaster was amply avenged in 1692 by the 
great battle of La Hogue, partly fought in mid-Channel, and finished 
off the coast of Normandy, where the British sailors, under the eyes 
of James II. and of a French army prepared for the invasion of 
England, made an end of that enterprise by burning many French 
first-rate ships of the line. The chief glory, on the French side, 
in the land-warfare, lay with Catinat and Luxembourg. Catinat, 
fighting in Italy with Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy, an able prince 
and brave warrior, gained a complete victory at Staffarde, south-west 
of Turin, and forced Savoy to submission. In the following year, 
1691, Catinat passed into Piedmont, stormed the enemy's lines 
near Susa, captured that town, Montalban, and Nice, and finally, in 
1693, gained the victory of Marsaglia, the more glorious that Prince 
Eugene of Savoy, one of the foremost soldiers of the age, was one 
of his opponents. The operations of Luxembourg and other 
generals in Flanders against William III. are well known from 
Macaulay's immortal work. In 1691 Mons was taken, under the 
eyes of Louis, and in presence of William's army. In 1692 Namur 
fell, in the same fashion, and Luxembourg defeated William at 
Steinkerk. In 1693 the same great commander was again successful 
over the English king at the battle of Landen or Neerwinden. 
His antagonist, great after defeat, soon showed as bold a front as 
ever, and the death of Luxembourg, in January, 1695, rid him of 
his most formidable foe. The duke of Savoy still maintained the 
contest against Catinat, and a French invasion of Spain had little 
success. Louis was fighting a many-headed hydra, and all his 
victories were of little real use. Men and money were beginning 
to fail, and the spirit of the armies was flagging. Louvois had 
died in July, 169 1, and the organisation of the troops suffered. 
In September, 1695, William effected the great military success of 
his career in the capture of Namur from Marshal Boufflers, in the 
face of a vast French army under Villeroi. The town and citadel 
had been newly fortified by Vauban ; the garrison was very strong ; 
the relieving-army, which did not dare to attack William's lines and 
covering-force, had 100,000 men. The great Dutch engineer, 
Cohorn, had a chief share in this grand achievement. Tired at last 
of the struggle, Louis made peace in 1696 with Savoy, the duke 
receiving back the territories conquered by Catinat, and giving his 
daughter in marriage to the young duke of Burgundy, grandson of 
Louis. The war ended in October, 1697, with the Peace of 
Ryswick, a village near the Hague. The French king's acquisitions 



494 A History of the World 

in Spain and Flanders were restored, as also several German towns. 
Alsace, with Strasburg, remained in his possession. 

The peace was, however, nothing but a truce, prior to the great 
struggle known as the War of the Spanish Succession, a contest 
which at once displayed the grasping and formidable ambition of 
Louis, and put an end to French predominance in Europe.* On 
the death of Charles II. of Spain in November, 1700, it was found 
that by will he had left the whole of his dominions to a grandson 
of Louis, Philip of Anjou. The French monarch, exulting in the 
success of his intrigues, which seemed to bring France and the 
great Spanish dominions virtually under one rule, declared to Philip, 
as he sent him to assume power in Spain, " There are no longer 
any Pyrenees." Louis well knew that a great war must ensue. 
The emperor, Leopold, claimed the Spanish throne for his son, 
afterwards the emperor Charles VI., and England and Holland 
were certain, in the interests of " the balance of power," to oppose 
by arms the French succession. In reckless defiance of treaties, 
Louis further provoked England in 1701 by recognising, on 
James II. 's death, his son James Stuart as king of England. The 
" Grand Alliance " instantly formed by the energetic efforts of 
William III. included England, Holland, and the emperor, with 
the other chief German princes, except the electors of Bavaria and 
Cologne. Savoy and Portugal afterwards joined the allies. The 
death of William in March, 1702, was a great blow to the cause, 
but his place was well supplied by the appointment of Marlborough 
to the command in Flanders, and, in political and diplomatic affairs, 
by Marlborough and Heinsius, who became the leading statesman 
of Holland. The imperial general, Prince Eugene of Savoy, was 
Marlborough's able and energetic assistant. British troops had 
some share in the warfare carried on in the interior of Spain, but 
Philip V. was, in the end, firmly seated on the throne, mainly owing 
to the skill of his commanders, the dukes of Vendome and Berwick. 
In 1702 an English and Dutch fleet, under Sir George Rooke, 
almost destroyed a French fleet of 30 vessels in Vigo harbour, and 
captured or destroyed a number of Spanish galleons. In the same 
year the brave Benbow, in the West Indies, sustained the honour 
of the navy in a six-days' engagement with a greatly superior French 

* The origin of this war, and the operations in Spain, are best given in 
Lord Macaulay's Essays, War of (he Succession in Spain. For a general view, 
and a good account of Blenheim, readers should see Creasy's Decisive Battles of 
the World. 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 495 

fleet, dying of his wounds on reaching Jamaica. In 1704 the 
sailors and marines of the fleet under Sir George Rooke surprised 
and took the fortress of Gibraltar, an acquisition little thought of at 
the time ; one which, as all the world knows, no efforts have ever 
been able to wrest from our grasp. 

Before briefly dealing with the main events of this great struggle, 
we may advert to some reasons, apart from the duke of Marl- 
borough's surpassing genius in diplomacy and war, for the final 
failure of France. The honest but incapable Chamillart had 
become, through the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, minister of 
finance in 1699, and minister of war in 1701. In the one capacity 
he was anything but a Colbert, in the other he was not quite a 
Louvois. In order to raise money, the colonelcies of regiments and 
the crosses of St. Louis — a distinction established in 1693 — were 
sold. The operations in the field were, to a large extent, directed 
by Louis, Mme. de Maintenon, and Chamillart, from Versailles. 
Students of the war in the Peninsula a century later are well aware 
of the mischief done by Napoleon's interference, from a distance, 
with his marshals in Spain. With the electric wires, a Moltke may, 
in full knowledge of all the enemy's movements and positions, direct 
his army corps like pieces of chess, and with success. In the days 
of couriers, the change of circumstances during the lapse of time 
between the dispatch and the receipt of orders often made such 
meddling disastrous. The discipline which had been so strict under 
Louvois had been much relaxed in the French armies. The com- 
panies of regiments, and the number of officers to a company, fell 
below the proper strength. This state of affairs was owing to a 
corrupt understanding of commanders with the commissariat-officers, 
who drew stores for the full number, and divided the booty. The 
magazines were ill-supplied, and the weapons were of inferior make 
and temper. The contest had begun in 1701, on the emperor's side, 
with his dispatch of Prince Eugene into Italy. That great com- 
mander, fighting against Catinat, Villeroi, and Vendome, with 
general success, won a great victory in September, 1706, storming 
the French lines round Turin, taking the camp, and routing the 
army, with the loss of all guns, baggage, and stores, and the military 
chest. An army of 60,000 men was thus ruined, under Marsin and 
the due de la Feuillade, the latter being the son of the incapable 
Chamillart, whose interference had evil effects. The French hold 
on Italy was almost entirely lost, and the emperor (now Joseph 1., 
son of Leopold) became predominant. The warfare in Flanders is 



496 A History of the World 

well known from British history. The great victory of Ramillies, in 
1706, deprived France of all territory as far as Lille. In 1708 the 
victory of Oudenarde, won by Marlborough and Eugene, " twin 
thunderbolts of war," was followed by the capture of Lille. France 
was becoming exhausted. It was hard to obtain money to pay the 
troops, and the " farmers " of the revenue first robbed the suffering 
people and then insulted them by their luxurious display. Chamillart 
resigned his office as finance-minister, leaving affairs in the greatest 
disorder, and in 1709 he gave up the ministry-of-war. The misery 
of France was completed by the terribly hard winter of that year. 
The olive-trees in the south were killed by frost, and most of the 
fruit-trees perished. The next harvest was an assured failure, and 
the stores of provisions were low. The needful supply of corn was 
brought at great cost from the Levant and from Africa, exposed on 
the way to hostile cruisers. In this extremity, Louis and the nobles 
sold their plate for the public service, and certain advances for peace 
were made to the Dutch, whose commissioners demanded that the 
French king should compel his grandson to resign the Spanish 
crown. When the matter was referred to Heinsius, Marlborough, 
and Eugene, who all wished the war to continue, the humiliating 
terms proposed — the surrender of Alsace, and the forcible expulsion 
of Philip V., by French troops, from Spain — forced Louis, for the 
first time in his life, to appeal to his subjects in a royal address 
whereby he strove to arouse their indignation and to stir their pity 
for his position. He then declared to his council that, if he must 
make war, he would rather fight his enemies than his own kinsman, 
and he prepared to renew the struggle. In 1709 the sanguinary 
battle of Malplaquet ended in the defeat of the French under Villars, 
followed by the loss of Mons. The danger on the northern frontier 
was so great that Louis again begged for peace, making large offers 
— the surrender of Alsace, the recognition of the German claimant 
to the Spanish throne, and the surrender of many fortresses, includ- 
ing Lille, to Holland. These terms were rejected with disdain by 
the allies, who insisted that the French monarch should himself 
drive his grandson out of Spain. The way to Paris was open to 
the allies from the north, when party-spirit in England deprived 
Marlborough of the command in December, 1711, and saved Louis 
from having terms of peace dictated in his capital. At the same 
time, by the death of the emperor Joseph I., the Archduke Charles, 
German claimant of the Spanish throne, became emperor in succession 
to his brother, as Charles VI. 



The Wars of Louis XIV. 497 

In Germany, the French won many successes over the imperialists, 
but on August 13th, 1704, at Blenheim, the general issue was really 
decided in Marlborough's and Eugene's grand victory over Marshals 
Tallard and Marsin. Louis, from that day, was really fighting, not 
for conquest, but for favourable terms of peace. His German allies, 
the electors of Bavaria and Cologne, were driven from their territories, 
and some subsequent success of Marshal Villars was of little avail. 
In the north of France, at the close of the war, the same commander, 
facing Eugene alone in 17 12, was enabled to procure for Louis better 
terms than he could have hoped. The Savoy prince, heading a 
great composite army of Dutch, Brandenburgers, Saxons, Hessians, 
Danes, and Palatinate troops, had, with his advanced detachments, 
ravaged part of Champagne, and reached the very gates of Reims ; 
and Louis declared that, if another disaster in the field occurred, 
he would call around him all the French nobles, lead them against 
the foe, and die at their head. He was saved from this theatrical 
display of devotion by Villars. That able general suddenly attacked 
Denain, in July, 171 2, and forced the entrenchments of Albemarle, 
an English general under Prince Eugene, capturing him and all his 
officers. The prince, coming up too late to retrieve matters, retired, 
and the French marshal then swept on and captured Marchiennes, 
with vast stores gathered for the allies. Douai and other towns 
were soon retaken by the French, and Prince Eugene was forced 
to withdraw. We may here note the heavy domestic misfortunes 
which had befallen the French monarch, in the successive deaths 
of the dauphin, his only legitimate son ; of the dauphin's eldest son, 
the very promising duke of Burgundy, a man who might, if he had 
been spared to France, have averted by good government the great 
Revolution ; of the duchess of Burgundy, his wife, and of their 
eldest son. This last event left the throne open to their second 
son, afterwards Louis XV. The " Grand Alliance " had been now 
dissolved, and the war ended in various treaties of peace which are 
comprehended under the title of the Peace of Utrecht, concluded in 
April, 1 7 13, and in 17 14. In regard to Holland, that republic, by 
the " Barrier-Treaty/' received security in the right of occupying 
a number of fortresses along the French frontier, from Furnes to 
Namur. Lille was restored to France, and the fortifications of 
Dunkirk were demolished. Savoy received some more territory in 
upper Italy, and the island of Sicily as a kingdom. The elector 
of Brandenburg had a new title as " King of Prussia," and received 
some addition of territory on the wes-t. Philip V. remained king of 



498 A History of the World 

Spain and her colonies. The emperor received the Netherlands 
(which thus became the " Austrian " instead of the " Spanish " 
Netherlands), Naples, Sardinia, and the Milanese territory. The 
electors of Bavaria and Cologne, who had been placed under the 
ban of the empire, were fully restored. Lastly, Great Britain had 
the Protestant (Hanoverian or Brunswick) succession recognised by 
France and other powers. The crowns of Spain and France were 
to be separately held, a decision which settled the chief original 
matter in dispute. North American territory — Newfoundland, Nova 
Scotia (Acadie), and Hudson Bay Company's lands — were finally ceded 
by France to the British empire, and Spain gave up Gibraltar and 
Minorca, and made the arrangement called the Asiento, or contract 
for supplying the Spanish colonies with African slaves, whereby 
British commerce on the Spanish main in America was benefited. 
The Treaty of Utrecht marks a great epoch in the history of the 
British as regards the contest for supremacy among the nations of 
the world. The work begun by their success against the Armada 
was thus completed. Holland had been the rival of England in 
the earlier part of the 17th century; in the latter half of that age 
France had been decidedly the foremost nation of the world. That 
position was now assumed by Great Britain, and from the date of 
this famous treaty she has always been, in all respects, in the very 
front, and foremost of all nations in trade, wealth, maritime resources, 
and naval power. The Asiento contract with Spain broke down the 
Spanish monopoly of trade in central and southern America, and 
the loss of Nova Scotia was, for France, a first step towards the 
cession of all her dominions in North America. 

Chapter III. — Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe; 
Rise of Russia and Prussia ; the Seven Years' War : 
Russia and Turkey ; the Partition of Poland. 

In Sweden, the abdication, in 1654, of Queen Christina, daughter 
of Gustavus Adolphus, brought to the throne her cousin Charles X., 
who warred with Poland, Russia, Denmark, the emperor, and the 
elector of Brandenburg, the chief result being the Danish loss of 
all remaining territory in Sweden, and consequently of the absolute 
control of the passage of the Sound. On the king's sudden death 
in 1660, his son, Charles XL, became king as a minor. War 
with Denmark and Brandenburg, caused by Sweden's alliance with 
Louis XIV., brought a great defeat for the Swedes in 1675, at 



Centra], Northern, and Eastern Europe 499 

Fehrbellin, north-west of Berlin, from Frederick William, the "Great 
Elector." The French monarch, however, compelled the victor, 
in 1679, to restore to Sweden most of his conquests in Pomerania. 
Under the Swedish king's wise and energetic rule much improve- 
ment was made, and the country, at his death in 1697, was prosperous 
and powerful. The accession of his son Charles XII. (1697-1718), 
at 15 years of age, was the signal of attack from ambitious and 
revengeful neighbouring sovereigns, who little knew the character of 
their intended youthful victim. This brave, reckless, able, ambitious, 
hardy, virtuous sovereign is well known to British readers, in the 
salient points of his adventurous and extraordinary career, from the 
noble lines in Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. This strange 
hero's passionate and obstinate disposition, in public affairs, brought 
a downfall of power to the chief Scandinavian country. The reign 
opened with brilliant successes gained by the king over his three 
assailants, the tsar of Russia and the kings of Poland and Denmark. 
The Danes were torced to sue for peace, after invading Holstein, by 
Charles' invasion of Zealand, and the aid of an Anglo-Dutch squadron 
under Sir George Rooke. The king of Poland (Augustus II., 
elector ot Saxony), who aimed at seizing Livonia, was defeated 
in 1 701 and the two following years in three battles, and deposed 
from his Polish throne. In 1704 and 1706 two other victories of 
Charles forced Augustus to a humiliating peace, including the 
renunciation of alliance with Russia. The troops of the tsar Peter, 
the chief antagonist, had been utterly defeated in November, 1700, 
at the battle of Narva, to the south of the Gulf of Finland, where 
the young Swedish monarch, with only 8,000 warriors, stormed the 
Russian camp occupied by 50,000 men. Seven years passed away 
before Charles again invaded Russia, in January, 1708, with an 
army exceeding 40,000 men. He was now to encounter a different 
foe from the Peter of 1700. The Russian army had been well 
trained, and the sovereign had learned some strategy and tactics. 
After some initial success, Charles was led astray by the promises 
of the Cossack hetman (general) Mazeppa, and turned southwards, 
across the Dnieper, into the Ukraine, where he vainly besieged 
Pultowa. The promised large supports of Cossacks were not 
forthcoming ; reinforcements from Sweden were intercepted ; and 
at last, with an army reduced to about 20,000 men, and those 
exhausted by a hard winter endured with scanty supplies, Charles 
was forced to meet the tsar, who was in command of overwhelming 
numbers. The battle of Pultowa, fought on July 8th, 1709, founded 



5<D0 A History of the World 

Russian power on a new and firm basis as that of the leading nation 
in northern Europe, and ended at one blow Swedish ascendency. 
After desperate fighting and heavy losses, the Swedish army was 
broken up, and Charles was for five years a fugitive in Turkey. 
His territories were well defended for a time by the regency in 
Stockholm, and he placed the victor of Pultowa in difficulties by 
a Turkish invasion. Peter, however, extricated himself by bribery 
and intrigue. In 17 14 Charles returned to his country, and found 
himself confronted by a combination of Prussia, Saxony, Denmark, 
Hanover, and Russia. The king then formed a vast scheme for 
making terms with Peter by surrendering the Baltic provinces of 
Sweden ; conquering Norway ; invading the British Isles, and 
replacing the House of Stuart on the throne, with the aid of the 
Jacobite party and of Spain. Of this ambitious plan, the only part 
executed was the conclusion of peace with the tsar. A third 
invasion of Norway closed in December, 1718, with Charles' death 
by a musket-shot from the fortress at the siege of Frederikshall. 
The war soon ended with the loss, to Sweden, of the duchies of 
Bremen and Verden, by sale to Hanover ; of Stettin and western 
Pomerania, to Prussia, partly by sale ; and of Livonia, Esthonia, 
and other Baltic territory, with the islands of Oesel and Dago, to 
Russia. Thus ended the position of Sweden as a prominent 
European power, held by her for about a century. In succeeding 
reigns, down to the accession of Gustavus III. in 1 77 1, the royal 
power greatly declined, and the government was in the hands of 
rival parties of nobles — the " Caps " (Mutzen) and " Hats " {Hiite) — 
in the Council of State, respectively supporting a Russian and a 
French policy. Unsuccessful war with Russia in 1741-1743 ended 
in the Peace of Abo, whereby Sweden surrendered part of Finland. 
The reign of Gustavus III., beginning in 1771, was marked by his 
energetic and successful efforts to break down the power of the 
oligarchy ; to promote agriculture, commerce, mining, science, and 
literature ; and to provide benevolent institutions. The combination 
of these schemes with a desire to maintain his court in the splendour 
of a Swedish Versailles brought financial difficulties, increased 
taxation, unpopularity, and fresh trouble with the nobles, one of 
whose tools, Ankarstrom, assassinated the king at Stockholm in 1792. 
The history of Denmark, during the period under review, 
presents little of importance. Christian IV., whom we have seen 
in the Thirty Years' War, and who died in the year of the Peace of 
Westphalia (1648), did much for the country in extending her 



Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe 501 

commerce, in legislative and financial reforms, and in his patronage 
of the arts and sciences. His popularity is attested by the 
commemoration of his name in those of the Norwegian towns 
Christiansand and Christiania. He had been much thwarted by 
the nobles, and under his son Frederick III., in 1660, the people 
rose against the oligarchy and gave the sovereign absolute power. 
Under this constitution, for about a century, the peasantry were 
practically serfs, and the middle classes had little influence; but 
before the close of the 18th century, under the generally benignant 
rule of the monarchs, many administrative improvements were 
made, and the tillers of the soil had become gradually free. 

Hungary was in evil case under the rule of the bigoted emperor 
Leopold I. (1657-1705), a man strongly influenced by the Jesuits. 
His deliberate efforts to "impoverish, enslave, and recatholicise " the 
country, as he himself expressed his purpose, caused a conspiracy, 
headed by Catholics, for the independence of the land, but the 
plot was detected, and the ringleaders died on the scaffold. An 
exterminating policy caused the destruction, in a few years, of 
thousands of Protestant families, and a Protestant rising, with an 
appeal to Turkey for aid, brought the invasion of 1683, in which 
Vienna was besieged by a Turkish host led by the grand vizier 
Kara Mustapha, and only saved by a united German and Polish 
army under Charles of Lorraine, and the famous John Sobieski, 
king of Poland, whose deliverance of the Austrian capital threw a 
gleam of glory over the declining days of his country. Before 
Leopold's death the Diet at Presburg declared the throne of 
Hungary hereditary in the House of Hapsburg. In 1686 Buda, 
having been for nearly a century and a half in Turkish hands, 
was stormed, after a long siege and five unsuccessful assaults, by 
Duke Charles of Lorraine, whose columns here, for the first time 
in war, advanced with fixed bayonets. In the following year the 
same hero defeated the Turks at Mohacs, the scene of a former 
great Hungarian defeat above recorded, and the war ended in 1697 
with Prince Eugene's complete triumph at the battle of Zenta, on 
the Theiss. In 1699 the Peace of Carlowitz gave Austria possession 
of most of Hungary, and of Transylvania, and the Turkish frontier 
was, for the first time in a treaty, made to recede, with a significant 
warning to Ottoman aggression on Christendom. After another 
vain contest of the combined Hungarian nobles and peasantry 
against Austrian oppression, ending a period of constitutional 
struggles between the nation and the sovereign, a new war with 
33 



502 A History of the World 

Turkey began in 1716, and a victory of Prince Eugene soon wrested 
from the Moslem their last portion of Hungarian territory, and 
established the frontier of Hungary as it exists at the present day. 
The Turks left the country ruined and devastated, to be restored 
to fertility, civilisation, and prosperity only by the energetic efforts, 
during a century and a half, of her brave and patient people Under 
the emperor, Charles VI. (1711-1740), constitutional and religious 
liberty were enjoyed by Hungary, and their queen, Maria Theresa 
( 1 740-1 780), continued the same policy, and showed her gratitude 
to the people who supported her cause with so much magnanimity 
and self-sacrifice by earnest efforts to improve their condition in 
educational, religious, and industrial affairs. Joseph II. (1780-1790), 
an enlightened reformer in some respects, was not crowned as "king 
of Hungary " because he did not choose to swear fidelity to the 
constitution, and he ruled as an autocratic sovereign, whose chief 
fault was a disregard of national feelings, class interests, and 
prejudices, in his efforts to promote the welfare of his Hungarian 
subjects. His attempts were all resisted because the nation and 
their Diet were allowed to have no voice as to measures of reform, 
and his desire to Germanise the people wounded their strong feeling 
of nationality. In the end, all his illegal edicts were revoked, 
except those enjoining religious toleration, and the ancient constitution 
of the country was re-established. 

Few monarchs have better earned the title of " Great " than 
Peter I. of Russia, who became tsar in 1689, at 17 years of age. 
Left untrained in his early youth, he possessed a natural ability 
and a resolution which enabled him to surmount all obstacles; 
to show himself equal to the highest duties of the general and the 
statesman ; to rule a vast empire ; to create a nation ; to give Russia, 
for the first time, a high place in the European system of politics 
and war. No stranger mixture of barbarism and culture ever filled 
a throne. This man of " stately form, intellectual forehead, piercing 
black eyes, Tartar nose and mouth, and gracious smile which could 
swiftly change into a frown black with all the stormy rage and hate of 
a barbarian tyrant," had to the last the personal habits of a semi- 
savage, living in his palace like a hog in a sty. He could, in a large 
measure, impress civilisation on a nation, sweeping away evil 
customs, reforming society, and forcing his subjects to adopt more 
enlightened methods than those of their ancestors, but he never 
tamed or polished himself. 1 >evoted to the work of self-improvement 
in acquiring knowledge for the sake of his country, and keeping his 



Rise of Russia 503 

brain ever at work on schemes for the national benefit, this same 
man, who found Russia Asiatic, and left her European, at one time 
displayed the best qualities of an enlightened ruler, and at another 
was merely a brutal and ruthless tyrant, who crushed opponents 
with terrible severity, and put to death his own rebellious son. One 
of his rarest gifts — amounting to positive genius — was his swift and 
accurate estimate of the men proper to aid him in his great work of 
changing a semi-oriental, degraded, and benighted people into a 
modern and civilised community. For his own education, for 
suggestions concerning schemes of reform, and for practical aid in 
carrying out those plans, Peter was largely indebted to two foreigners, 
both of Scottish origin, Patrick Gordon and Francois Lefort. The 
latter, a native of Geneva, served for a time with the Swiss Guard at 
Paris, and went to Russia in 1675, where he became a commander 
of new troops who were raised to counteract the influence of the 
" streltzi " or old militia. Lefort became the leading personage in 
Russia, next to the new tsar, and had a large share in forming an 
army on the European model, and in founding the Russian naval 
force. Gordon, a native of Aberdeenshire, born in 1635, ran away 
from a Jesuit college in Prussia in 1653, and then became a soldier 
of fortune for several years under the Swedish flag. In i66r he 
entered the Russian service, and his work in reforming discipline 
soon gave him the rank of colonel. Gallant service against Cossacks, 
Turks, and Tartars raised him in 1688 to the position of general, 
and his intimacy with Peter was cemented by the zeal and courage 
which he displayed in crushing the conspirators against the tsar's 
throne and life in 1689. Nine years later, during Peter's absence in 
western Europe to study ship-building and other mechanical arts, 
Gordon suppressed the formidable rebellion of the " streltzi " which 
caused the tsar to finally break up that antiquated force. 

The visit of Peter to England is narrated in a lively style by 
Ford Macaulay towards the end of his History. For three months 
he worked hard at acquiring information, living partly at Deptford, 
among the shipwrights, drinking and smoking after his day's toil 
with his companions at a waterside tavern ; and partly in London, 
where he lodged in Norfolk Street, Strand, visiting the king 
(William III.) at Kensington House; attending a sitting at the 
House of Lords, and seeing a play. At Lambeth Palace he saw 
the ceremony of ordination performed, and beheld in the arch- 
bishop's library the first good collection of books on which his 
eyes had rested. He declared that he had never imagined that 



504 A History of the World 

there were so many printed volumes in the world. At Portsmouth 
he witnessed a sham sea-fight, to his intense delight ; from Oxford 
University he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. On leaving 
England in April, 1698, Peter showed his appreciation of our 
country by carrying off about 500 engineers, artisans, gunners, 
surgeons, and other workers with hand and brain as instructors 
for his subjects in the arts of peace and war. We have seen 
how the tsar fared in his contests with Sweden, and his extension 
of Russian territory in Europe. Towards the close of his reign, 
ending in 1725, war with Persia opened the Caspian to Russian 
trade by the conquest of territory including the towns of Derbend 
and Baku. He left his country, in many respects, regenerated and 
transformed, and firmly placed on the high road to further improve- 
ment and development of her material resources. On the political 
side, Peter established autocratic power by destroying that of the 
boyars and of the Sobor or States-General, introducing in their 
stead a senate nominated by the sovereign. The rank of patriarch 
in the Church was abolished, and the emperor became the head 
of that institution. Authority was centralised in the hands of 
various boards or committees, resembling modern cabinets or 
ministries, under the tsar's immediate control. The seat of govern- 
ment was transferred from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the city 
created by himself on the banks of the Neva. Serfdom became 
intensified into slavery. All Russians of every class were the 
subjects of the tsar in equal degree, without interference with 
distinctions of class in regard to each other. Internal order was 
maintained, and plots against the throne were checked, through 
the action of a powerful secret police. The courts of justice and 
the financial system were remodelled. Agriculture and other in- 
dustries, education, the fine arts, literature and learning, were 
earnestly promoted. New breeds of cattle were introduced ; com- 
munications, in a region of countless rivers, were improved through 
the connection of streams by canals. In social matters, the Mongol 
principle was weakened by efforts to raise the low position of women. 
With the zeal of a drill-master, Peter strove, and with much success, 
to force, or as some writers express it, to " knout," his barbarous 
subjects into civilisation. 

Under Anna, empress or tsarina from 1730 to 1740, a German 
party was in power at court. There was territorial retrogression 
in the restoration of Caspian provinces to Persia, and disastrous 
war arose with Turkey. Matters were somewhat restored under 



Rise of Russia 505 

Elizabeth (1741-1762), daughter of Peter the Great. The German 
party was ousted from power ; the senate founded by Peter resumed 
its authority ; the army was strengthened by a regular system of 
recruiting ; oppressive tolls were abolished ; and the revenue was 
augmented by import-duties. The gain of a portion of Finland in 
1743 has been recorded; the share of Russia in the Seven Years' 
War will be referred to in connection with Frederick of Prussia. 
Catharine II. (1762-1796) is a famous Russian ruler. Of her private 
character the less said the better. In her public capacity she showed 
great ability and energy, and had much success, aided by her 
favourite Potemkin, as minister and general, from 1776 to 1791, 
and by the renowned warrior Suwarof (or Suwarrow). The limits of 
the empire were largely extended by force of arms. A war with 
Turkey, waged from 1768 to 1774, ended in the Peace of Kainardji 
(in Bulgaria), whereby Russia at last attained Peter's aim of access 
to the Black Sea. The chief ports on the Sea of Azov, and Kinburn, 
at the mouth of the Dnieper, were acquired. The Tartars and the 
Circassians had been already deprived of the territory between the 
Volga, the Don, and the Caucasus, and a new road into Asia was 
opened by the acquisition of the Pass of Darial in the great 
Caucasus range. The Treaty of Kainardji, a monument of Russian 
diplomatic skill, is notable for words having a most important 
bearing on the " Eastern Question," in giving to Catharine, and, 
by presumption, to her successors, the right to protect the Greek 
Church and its adherents in Turkey. A powerful weapon for 
Russian ambition in coming days was thus forged.' A few years 
later the Tartars of the south were overcome, and the Crimea was 
annexed. In 1787, when war with Turkey was resumed, the 
empress made her entry into Kherson, a new fortress of her erection 
on the Dnieper, beneath an arch bearing the significant words 
" The way to Byzantium." The " Eastern Question " is here 
expressed in the briefest possible form, meaning the determined 
purpose of Russia to rule some day at Constantinople, the cradle 
of her religious system. Suwarof gave token of his skill and valour 
in this new contest with Turkey, and in 1790 was victorious at 
Ismail, on the northernmost arm of the Danube, storming the 
fortress with bloodshed and other horrors that have become pro- 
verbial. In 1792 the Peace of Jassy confirmed previous Russian 
conquests from Turkey, and the Dniester became the boundary 
between the two empires. 

We now turn to the disappearance of Poland from the European 



506 A History of the World 

system of independent nations. In the course of the 18th century, 
under weak kings, and amid evils due to the selfish, unpatriotic 
conduct of the nobles ; to the intolerance of the clergy ; to the lack 
of a middle class ; to the wretched state of the serfs, and to the 
want of strong natural frontiers for protection from powerful neigh- 
bours, the condition of the country became deplorable. Poland was 
a ready prey to ambition, and in 1772 Austria, Russia, and Prussia 
effected the first partition, by which Russia gained eastern Lithuania ; 
Austria took eastern Gallicia and other territory ; and Prussia 
acquired Polish Prussia, i.e. West Prussia, with the exception of 
Danzig, Thorn, and some other territory. The share of Russia 
(42,000 square miles) a little exceeded the combined shares of 
her two partners in the robbery. Efforts were now made by the 
Poles to amend their absurd constitutional system. The liberum 
veto in the Diet was abolished ; the burghers were put on a level 
with the nobles in that body ; the condition of the peasantry was 
improved ; religious toleration was introduced. The new consti- 
tution was promulgated in 1791. Some of the nobles, indignant 
at the loss of their precious privileges, then slew their country by 
inviting invasion from Russia. The Russian troops were supported 
by Prussians, though the king of Prussia, Frederick William II., 
had sworn to defend the Poles against their powerful neighbour on 
the east. A fruitless resistance was made by patriots under the 
famous Kosciusko and Prince Joseph Poniatowski. Kosciusko, who 
had become a brigadier-general in America, fighting against British 
troops for the revolted colonists, held a position at Dubenka for 
five days, with 4,000 men against 18,000 Russians. Poniatowski 
was afterwards with Napoleon in Russia, in 181 2, fighting splendidly 
at Smolensk and Borodino, and in 1813 he shared, after a noble 
defence on the right wing, in the disaster of Leipzig, and was on 
the spot created a marshal of France, only to perish in the waters 
of the Elster as he covered the French retreat. His body lies at 
Cracow beside those of Sobieski and Kosciusko. In 1792 he gained 
some brilliant victories over the Russian invaders, but nothing could 
prevent the second partition (1793). Russia now received territory 
to the amount of 96.000 square miles in the remaining part of 
Lithuania, with Podolia and Volhynia. Her fellow-robber, Prussia, 
was content with less than a fourth of that area, in " Great Poland " 
(now South Prussia), with Danzig and Thorn. A general rising of 
the Poles then occurred, in 1794, with Kosciusko as dictator and 
commander-in-chief. He defeated a greatly superior Russian force, 



Rise of Prussia 507 

and the Poles in Warsaw then joined the movement. Poniatowski 
joined the army as a volunteer, but was placed by the leader in 
"command of the division whose task it was to defend Warsaw on 
the north. The patriots were overwhelmed by Austrian, Prussian, 
and Russian forces, and Kosciusko was defeated, severely wounded, 
and taken prisoner at the fierce battle of Maciejowice (Matchevitz). 
Suwarof (Suwarrow) captured Warsaw with dreadful slaughter to 
the defenders, and the Polish monarchy came to an end. In the 
third and last partition (1795) Russia again took the lion's share, 
acquiring 43,000 square miles in all the remaining eastern territory. 
Austria had 18,000 square miles in west Gallicia ; Prussia took 
21,000 square miles in Warsaw and surrounding territory, part of 
Cracow (New Silesia), and the .region between the Vistula, Bug, and 
Niemen, or " New East Prussia." 

The middle of the 18th century is distinguished by the advance 
to a front rank among the nations of the monarchy of Prussia, under 
Frederick II., justly styled "the Great," the most considerable man 
who has succeeded to a throne since Charles V. His eminent 
position in modern history is due to the possession and exercise 
of most of the qualities that mark the subduer and successful ruler 
of mankind. His military talents were such as to make him the 
greatest general of his age, and to compel Napoleon, Prussia's deadly 
foe at a later day, to place him in the first rank. His zeal for 
good administration, for the prosperity and happiness of his people, 
was backed by the utmost energy, vigilance, sound sense, superiority 
to prejudice and tradition, and sympathy for cultivation and en- 
lightenment, and was marred only by occasional lapses due to a 
dictatorial temper and a restlessly active mind which urged him 
to meddle with affairs better left to his chosen and usually able 
instruments. He was emphatically a strong man, the embodiment 
of kingly resolution and force, and his achievements made him, 
in spite of a cold heart, a cynical temper, and a scornful demeanour, 
not only a favourite with his own people, but an object of pride 
to all men of German race. They contrasted him with the loath- 
some voluptuary that sat on the throne of France, and saw a 
petty Teutonic state, whose older fellows in the empire were 
decaying under an antiquated system of wasteful misrule, present a 
model of economy and material progress, and of military, legislative, 
and judicial reform. The great Frederick is best viewed, as a 
Prussian king, by contrast with his two unworthy successors who 
let the monarchy down to temporary degradation and ruin. 



508 A History of the World 

The founder of the greatness of the House of Hohenzollern 
was a man already seen in these pages, Frederick William of 
Brandenburg, the "Great Elector," a wise and. firm ruler, who 
died in 1688. His son Frederick, a vain man fond of pomp and 
show, was the first " king of Prussia," as Frederick I., crowned at 
Kdnigsberg in 1701. The exaltation of rank from an electorate to 
a monarchy was of importance in giving Prussian rulers an induce- 
ment to strengthen and extend their inheritance. This ruler, 
whose extravagance of life, imitating the splendour of Versailles, 
impoverished the nation, promoted civilisation by founding the 
University of Halle, the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and other 
like institutions. His son and successor, Frederick William I. 
(17 13-1740), was a man of entirely opposite character. Coarse in 
manners, violent of temper, often brutally cruel in conduct, con- 
temptuous of all culture and learning, he did much for the country 
which he ruled by a rigidly economical system, and by the creation, 
under the strictest discipline and the best training and equipment, 
of a regular army of over 80,000 men. As Philip of Macedon 
for Alexander, he forged the instrument which his son was to wield 
with so powerful an effect. We must remember that this military 
force was raised from and maintained by a population not exceeding 
two and a half millions. 

Frederick II. became king of Prussia, on his father's death, 
in 1740. He was 28 years of age, having passed an unhappy youth 
and early manhood, owing to his father's harsh treatment, which 
soured his temper and hardened his heart, and, in his rejection of 
the Christianity which his strictly orthodox sire had presented in 
so repulsive a guise, lowered his moral character in other points.* 
The year of his accession was that of the death of the emperor 
Charles VI., and the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession 
was due to disputes arising from the instrument called the "Pragmatic 
Sanction," whereby Charles, the last emperor, in the male line, of 
the House of Hapsburg, had made the Austrian dominions heritable 
in the female line. His daughter Maria Theresa thus succeeded 
to the hereditary dominions — the archduchy of Austria and other 
territories, and the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. This lady 
is known as the empress-queen, as the wife of Francis Joseph, of 
Lorraine, grand-duke of Tuscany, who was emperor from 1745 to 

* A picturesque and interesting account of the youth, character, court, and 
reign until 1763 of the Prussian king is given in Lord Macaulay's Essays, 
Frederick the Great. 



Rise of Prussia 509 

1765, and as queen of Hungary in her own right. There were 
various claimants for the Austrian inheritance, the chief being 
Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, and Augustus, elector of Saxony 
and king of Poland. Charles Albert was chosen emperor in 1742, 
but died in 1745, being succeeded, as above, by Francis of Lorraine. 
In the dispute concerning the Austrian dominions, the unscrupulous 
Frederick of Prussia, eager to extend his dominions, promptly seized 
Silesia, one of Maria Theresa's fairest provinces, on an antiquated 
and really baseless claim. His first war with Austria, after his 
victories at Mollwitz and elsewhere, ended in the cession to him, 
in 1742, of the greater part of Silesia. The age of chivalry was over, 
and the young queen of Hungary found herself assailed, apart from 
Frederick, by France, Spain, Bavaria, and Saxony. In this position, 
the brave and loyal Hungarians rushed to arms in her behalf, and 
England and Holland took her side in the struggle. The queen's 
armies quickly cleared Bohemia of its Saxon invaders, and forced 
the elector to terms. Bavaria was overrun and Munich was captured. 
French invaders of Bohemia were then driven out, and Maria 
Theresa's cause was strengthened in 1743 by George II. 's victory 
over the French at Dettingen, near Frankfort-on-the-Main, when 
a British sovereign for the last time led his troops to battle, the 
event being celebrated by Handel in his famous Te Deum. The 
restless king of Prussia, jealous of the Austrian successes, again 
took the field, and, gaining three successive victories, made peace 
with Austria at Dresden in December, 1745, retaining Silesia, and 
recognising Francis, husband of Maria Theresa, as emperor. Thus 
ended the " Second Silesian War," and the first period of Frederick's 
warfare with neighbouring states. His exploits in fields of battle, 
and the general vigour of his proceedings, had already caused 
Prussia to be regarded in a new light by the great European nations. 
The general contest ended in 1748 with the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
restoring all conquests, and recognising the " Pragmatic Sanction " 
in Austria. 

Frederick was well aware that the Peace of Dresden was only 
a truce. The jealousy of Austria had been strongly aroused by 
Prussian success, and Maria Theresa was brooding over the loss of 
Silesia. His n years of peace, from 1745 to 1756, were busily 
employed in internal improvements, the development of Silesian 
resources, and the maintenance of his splendid army in the highest 
state of efficiency. There were other European powers regarding 
Prussia with envious hatred, and a strong league was formed for the 



510 A History of the World 

absolute ruin of the new monarchy and the dismemberment of the 
Prussian territories. This formidable combination included France, 
Austria, Saxony, Russia, and the states of the empire except 
Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick, and Gotha, which remained in alliance 
with Prussia. Great Britain aided Frederick with money and troops, 
and this help, especially that of the subsidies, of which Frederick 
made the best use, was the chief outward agent in the preservation 
of Prussia. The main elements of safety were the admirable skill, 
the heroic endurance, the energy, perseverance, and determination 
of the great warrior and statesman who was to emerge in glory from 
a sea of troubles, giving an example unsurpassed in history of what 
capacity and resolution can effect against the greatest superiority of 
power and the utmost spite of fortune.* 

The king of Prussia took prompt measures against his foes. 
Saxony was flooded with his troops in the summer of 1756. The 
electoral army was blockaded at Pirna, near Dresden, and ultimately 
forced to surrender. The capital was occupied, and Augustus fled 
to his kingdom in Poland. Marshal Brown, advancing from Bohemia 
with Austrian troops to relieve Saxony, was attacked by the Prussians 
and defeated at Lowositz. For the rest of the war Saxony was 
mostly in Frederick's possession, and one of his enemies was thus 
disposed of, while 17,000 men of the army at Pirna reinforced the 
victor's troops. Early in 1757, while the British and Hanoverians 
in west Germany kept France at bay, and while the Russian army 
was yet far away, detained by deep snow, Frederick and his men 
rushed into Bohemia by four passes, and, aided by Prince Ferdinand 
of Brunswick, and by fine old Marshal Schwerin, defeated Brown in 
the great battle of Prague, with a loss, to the victors, of 18,000 men, 
and of Schwerin, who died in the thickest of the fray. The Austrians 
had 24,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or taken. The chief Austrian 
commander, Marshal Daun, was advancing, and the Prussian monarch, 
leaving a force to besiege a part of Brown's broken army in Prague, 
met the enemy on June 18th, at Kolin, midway between Prague 
and Sadowa, a place of more recent warlike renown. The cautious 
Daun, in an impregnable position, was attacked by Frederick with 
30,000 men, and all assaults were repulsed with a Prussian loss 
of nearly half the men engaged. The defeated king then raised 
the siege of Prague, and hurried out of Bohemia. In the west of 
Germany the duke of Cumberland had been defeated by the 

* The best brief account of the Seven Years' War is contained in Macaulay's 
Essays, as above. 



The Seven Years' War 5 1 1 

French, and, in order to save the electorate of Hanover, the British 
commander had concluded the humiliating " convention of Kloster- 
Zeven," withdrawing all his troops from the contest, and leaving the 
French army free to act against Prussia. In November, 1757, 
Frederick seemed on the verge of ruin. The Russians were laying 
waste his eastern territories ; the Austrians had overrun Silesia ; a 
French army was coming up from the west ; Berlin had been taken 
and plundered by the wild Croats of the Austrian service. The 
king dealt first with the French part of the appalling problem. 
The commander, Marshal Soubise, was a mere incapable, and 
on November 5th, in the great battle of Rosbach, west of Leipzig, 
he was utterly beaten. 7,000 French were captured ; the guns, 
colours, and baggage were taken. Frederick, active alike after 
victory and defeat, marched at once to Silesia, where all seemed 
lost. Breslau had fallen, and Daun and Charles of Lorraine, with 
a great army, held all the territory. On December 5th the glorious 
battle of Leuthen, west of Breslau, fought with 30,000 Prussians 
against 80,000 Austrians, ended in a complete victory for Frederick. 
Over one-third of the defeated were killed, wounded, or captured, 
and the trophies included 50 stand of colours, 100 guns, and 
4,000 waggons of stores. This battle, in which the oblique order 
of attack, directed against a wing of the hostile line, was used with 
wonderful effect, is extolled by Napoleon as a masterpiece of tactical 
skill. The immediate effect of the victory was the retaking of 
Breslau, and the reconquest of Silesia. Charles of Lorraine 
abandoned the struggle and retired to Brussels, and the conquering 
king led his wearied troops into winter quarters, while the fame of 
his victories filled the world. A new British and Hanoverian army 
now took the field in the west, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, 
who soon proved himself to be the second general of the age in 
ability. 

In 1758 Prince Ferdinand kept back the French, and Frederick, 
after some indecisive operations against the Austrian forces, marched 
to meet the Russians, now in the heart of his kingdom, and fought 
the battle of Zorndorf, near Frankfort -on-the-Oder. After a desperate 
struggle the enemy were defeated, and for a few months the east 
was rendered safe. The victor then hastened into Saxony to 
encounter the Austrians under cautious Daun and Laudohn (or 
Loudon), who was the most enterprising of the Austrian generals. 
They attacked him, in one of his rare moments of carelessness, at 
dead of night in his camp at Hochkirchen, inflicting a severe defeat, 



512 A History of the World 

with the loss of the brave Marshal Keith. Frederick soon repaired 
his losses, made a rapid and circuitous march past Daun's victorious 
army, passed into Silesia, and defeated a body of Austrians besieging 
Neisse, in the south of the country. The enemy were thus driven 
into Bohemia. Meanwhile Daun, in Saxony, attacked Dresden, 
which was desperately defended by the Prussian garrison. The 
suburbs had been burnt to the ground, when Frederick's swift return 
from Silesia caused the Austrians to retire. The campaign was 
over — it was now November — and the king passed the winter at 
Breslau. In 1759 the Austrian troops were again in Saxony, and 
other forces were threatening Berlin. The Russians defeated the 
king's men on the Oder, menaced Silesia, and joined Laudohn. 
Both armies intrenched themselves strongly at Kiinersdorf, east 
of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and Frederick, hastening to attack them, 
incurred one of his worst reverses, with terrible loss in men and 
guns. Undismayed, the hero soon rallied his men and again faced 
the foe with 30,000 troops. Then disaster came fast on disaster. 
One Prussian general, with a large force, was captured at Maxen, 
in Saxony ; another was defeated at Meissen, north-west of Dresden. 
At the end of the year Prussia seemed to be without further resources 
to maintain a contest against odds so overwhelming. The only 
success had been in the west, where Ferdinand of Brunswick, by 
the victory of Minden, in which British regiments played a glorious 
part, had ended all fear from France. 

The year 1760 opened badly for the king's cause. Berlin was 
again occupied, with the plunder of the palace. Silesia then became 
the scene of operations, and at Liegnitz, to the west of Breslau, 
Frederick gained a great victory over Marshal Laudohn. At Torgau, 
on the Elbe, north-east of Leipzig, after a fearful struggle, he defeated 
Daun. In 1761 success was varied, but matters went badly, on 
the whole, for the king. No great defeat was sustained, but his 
resources were near exhaustion. Laudohn captured, by surprise, 
the strong fortress of Schweidnitz, south-west of Breslau, and with 
this loss went half of Silesia, and the command of the chief passes 
through the mountains. The Russians defeated the king's forces in 
Pomerania ; the country seemed utterly wasted. At this crisis, 
when utter ruin was in near prospect, a certain event changed the 
face of the struggle. Mr. Pitt (afterwards Lord Chatham) retired 
from office in England; and the Empress Elizabeth of Russia died. 
The withdrawal of Pitt menaced ruin to the Prussian cause, as he 
would never have deserted his ally. The new minister, Lord Bute, 



The Seven Years' War 513 

made peace with France, and gave up interest in Continental policy. 
The loss of Frederick's only friend was, however, more than 
compensated by the change of rulers in Russia. The new tsar, 
Peter III., was an admirer of the Prussian monarch. He withdrew 
his forces, restored Prussian prisoners, and sent 15,000 men as a 
reinforcement. Thus aided, the king soon recovered Silesia, defeated 
Daun at Buckersdorf, and retook Schweidnitz. When Peter of 
Russia was deposed and murdered, his successor, Catharine II., 
maintained peace with Prussia. France became neutral towards 
Germany, and the great coalition against Prussia was thus dissolved. 
Austria alone was in the field, and, being threatened in formidable 
force by Turkey on the south-east, she could not act alone against 
Prussia. The war was over. In Macaulay's words on Frederick's 
part in the struggle, " the whole Continent in arms had proved 
unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp." In February, 1763, 
the Peace of Hubertusburg, in Saxony, left the Prussian king in 
possession of his conquest. He entered Berlin in triumph, after 
an absence of more than six years, passing along in an open carriage, 
with his able colleague in war, Ferdinand of Brunswick, at his side. 
His reception was such as to shake even his iron nerves. It was 
his task, and one fulfilled, on the whole, with admirable wisdom and 
success, to repair the fearful ravages of the Seven Years' War, during 
a reign protracted until 1786. The one great fact was that no debt 
had been incurred. Skill and rigid economy had enabled the king 
to pay his way throughout the contest, and the losses due to war 
were by degrees repaired. 

We turn to a brief notice of Austrian affairs in the period 
between the conclusion of peace and the French Revolution. 
Joseph II., son of Maria Theresa, a man of excellent abilities and 
intentions, was emperor from 1765 to 1790, but in the Austrian 
dominions he had full power only after his mother's death in 1780. 
He at once began a revolutionary system of benevolent reforms, 
in accordance with the arbitrary philanthropic methods of the 
1 8th century. His object was to establish, regardless of prescription 
and privilege, a strong, centralised, united state, and he succeeded 
in giving a new vitality to the monarchy, though none of his reforms 
survived him, with the important exceptions of the abolition of 
serfdom and the edict enjoining religious toleration. The clergy and 
the nobility, as privileged classes, were the objects of his hostility. 
In 1 781 the edict was issued which granted freedom of worship to 
all Christian sects, and in the course of the reign nearly 700 



514 A History of the World 

monasteries were closed, with the dispersal of 36,000 members of 
religious orders. The Pope (Pius VI.) vainly visited Vienna to 
oppose these proceedings. Attacks on the privileges of the nobles 
aroused great discontent, especially in Hungary and the Austrian 
Netherlands, and a revolt of the peasantry in Hungary, excited by 
the nobles, caused the withdrawal of the measures of reform. 



Chapter IV. — The Trans-Atlantic Problem : Great Britain, 
France, Spain. 

The earliest European colonisation of North America, apart from 
Mexico, was effected by the French. In 1534 Jacques Cartier, a 
navigator of St. Malo, made his way to the west coast of Newfound- 
land, and discovered Prince Edward's Island (afterwards thus named 
from Edward, duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria), Anticosti, 
and other places. Cape Breton Island had its name from French 
fishermen of Brittany in search of cod. In 1535 Francis I., pleased 
with Carder's success, sent him out with larger vessels, and the 
explorer sailed up the St. Lawrence to the Indian towns called 
Stadacona and Hochelaga, on the sites of Quebec and Montreal. 
Thus was Canada made known to the world, and Cartier heard 
from the friendly Algonquin and Huron natives something of the 
existence of great lakes and rivers to the west and south, in regions 
rich in game, rarely trodden by the foot of man. After passing the 
winter, Cartier took back to France some Algonquin chiefs who had 
been enticed on board, and this treacherous act, ending in their 
death in France prior to the explorer's next voyage, had a bad effect 
on the native feeling towards Europeans. Various efforts at 
colonisation failed from cold, famine, and disease, and we know 
nothing of Cartier after his return to France with survivors in 1544. 
Coligny made two useless attempts to found Huguenot colonies in 
the territory afterwards known as South Carolina and Florida. The 
first settlement was abandoned, and in 1565 the second party were 
all massacred by the Spaniards, " not as Frenchmen, but as 
Lutherans," as the Spanish commander declared. About this time 
French and British fishermen and traders were engaged with cod 
and furs and skins, and Frobisher and Davis, Baffin and Hudson, 
were exploring to the north for the " north-west passage " to Asia. 
The massacre of Frenchmen at Fort Carolina was avenged three 
years later, in 1568, by a special expedition whose leader, before 
he slew the guilty, said, " I do this not as to Spaniards, nor as to 



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The Trans-Atlantic Problem 5 1 5 

mariners, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers." We may note 
that, in 1572, Francis Drake was attacking the Spaniards at Nombre 
de Dios and Darien, and that six years later the great navigator, on 
the first English voyage round the world, touched at the west coast 
of North America, and claimed part of the country for England 
as "New Albion." In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, landing at 
Newfoundland, took formal possession of the island for his country, 
and in the following year Sir Walter Raleigh sent out mariners who 
landed in the territory named Virginia. Attempts at colonisation 
failed, and we can only record the name of " Virginia Dare " as that 
of the first English child born in x\merica. 

It was under Henry IV., in 1608, that the first permanent 
French settlement was made in America, with the foundation of a 
trading-post at Quebec by Samuel de Champlain. The name of 
this able, honest, energetic man was given to the lake which he 
discovered, whence the river Richelieu flows into the St. Lawrence. 
His character was that of an enterprising, chivalrous, brave 
adventurer who was enthusiastic for the conversion of the Indians, 
and for 30 years he was honourably connected with the colony 
which he established on a firm basis. The chief native tribes were 
the Algonquins, Hurons, and Iroquois, active, hardy people devoted 
to the chase, living in villages by subdivisions of clans subject to a 
sachem cr civil chief; whose council was composed of the foremost 
warriors. Craft and cruelty are assigned to all these natives, 
estimated to number, at the period under review, only a few hundred 
thousand in the whole region between Hudson's Bay and the valley 
of the Mississippi. The sub-tribes of the Algonquins included 
those known by the names of Sioux, Ojibways, and Shawnees. 
The Iroquois or " Five Nations," including the Senecas and 
Mohawks, are the natives best known in the contests between 
British and French settlers, and were the people most prominent 
in courage, discipline, and cruelty, fighting on all sides with success, 
as deadly foes, for a long period, of the Europeans, in the ambus- 
cades of irregular warfare, and in the murder of outlying settlers. 
Under a succession of viceroys of "New France," the Canadian 
colony made some progress, and the energetic Jesuit fathers soon 
appeared upon the scene, and became distinguished in missionary- 
work combined with exploration. Claude Allouez made his way 
to the regions north of Lake Superior. Marquette, voyaging down 
the Wisconsin in a birch-bark canoe, reached the Mississippi, 
passed the points where it receives the waters of the Missouri and 
34 



5 1 6 A History of the World 

of the Ohio (or Wabash), and first revealed that the great river had 
a southward course towards the Gulf of Mexico. The mouth of 
the river was reached in 1682 by one of the greatest French explorers 
in North America, Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, who claimed 
the southern territory for his sovereign under the name of Louisiana. 

In the reign of Charles I., from 1629 to 1632, Quebec was in 
possession of the English government, through seizure by Sir David 
Kirke, a Huguenot refugee, the Canadian colony being restored to 
France by the Treaty of St.-Germain-en-Laye. On Champlain's 
death, in 1635, there were only two or three hundred Europeans in 
French America, and the colony never attained any great success, 
mainly owing to the lack of settlers from Europe. Colbert made 
great efforts to increase the numbers and strength of the colonists by 
the dispatch of military settlers, and to promote prosperity by gifts 
of horses, sheep, horned cattle, and implements of tillage. Suc- 
cessful warfare was waged with the Iroquois, and trade grew in 
timber, fish, and furs. Towards the close of the 17th century, the 
attacks of the Iroquois, and outbreaks of scurvy and small-pox, 
caused the death of over 2,000 settlers, and in 1689, in the dreadful 
massacre of Lachine, near Montreal, some hundreds of men, 
women, and children perished. The French hold on North 
America was reduced to the posts at Quebec, Three Rivers, and 
Montreal, when the arrival of the able, courageous, and energetic 
soldier, Count de Frontenac, for a second term of office as governor, 
gave new life to the colony, now containing about 11,000 people. 

Before dealing with British colonisation of the New World, we 
may note that in 1609 Captain Henry Hudson, an English navigator 
in the Dutch service, entered a harbour at the point now occupied 
by New York, and sailed up the river called by his name, in the 
hope of thereby reaching the Pacific. Five years later the Dutch 
settled, as New Amsterdam, the place which became New York. 
In 1638 a colony of Swedes and Finlanders founded a settlement, 
east of Maryland, as " New Sweden," but in 1655 it was conquered 
by the Dutch. The Hollanders, in turn, were driven out by the 
English in 1664, and that part of the coast remained in British 
possession. The foundation of British colonies in North America 
is known from British history. Between 1607, when Virginia was 
settled by the "London Company" of merchants, and 1733, the 
date of the foundation of Georgia, 13 colonies, including the two 
named, had arisen on the east coast of the vast continent. The 
other 1 1 were Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, 



The Trans-Atlantic Problem 517 

Connecticut, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, North Carolina, New 
York, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. The colonists, coming 
from a land blessed with a large measure of constitutional freedom, 
lived under various charters and forms of government, subject to 
the British Crown, and mostly having their own legislative bodies. 
In spite of restrictions on trade due to the unwise commercial policy 
of the time, as expressed in the Navigation Acts, rapid progress 
w r as made by British settlers in the New World. Before the middle 
of the 17th century, Virginia had plantations extending 70 miles 
inland, and exported abundance of corn to the northern or New 
England settlements. The population of Massachusetts alone 
exceeded 30,000. Towards the end of the century, the Carolinas, 
enjoying a genial climate and a fertile soil, were reinforced by the 
arrival of some thousands of Huguenots, driven by religious perse- 
cution from France, and bringing with them to their new abode 
high moral conduct, good manners, and political, artistic, and agri- 
cultural skill. In 1699 the North American colonies probably 
contained 300,000 people, chiefly in New England — or Massa- 
chusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut — 
Virginia, Maryland, and New York. About one-sixth of the number 
were negro-slaves, mostly employed in the southern settlements, 
where the hotter climate precluded tillage by whites. 

Acadie, or Nova Scotia, restored to France in 1632, was occupied 
by both British and French settlers, who quarrelled with each other 
about fish and furs, and shared in the contests which arose between 
their colonial countrymen in Canada and the British possessions. 
Little progress was made, and in 1686 there were barely 1,000 
people, whose chief occupation lay in the fisheries. The European 
war between Louis XIV. of France and William III. involved the 
colonists in America. In February, 1690, the enterprising De 
Frontenac, governor of Canada, sent a force of French and Indians 
from Montreal who assailed with success the settlers in New York 
and New Hampshire. Sharp reprisals were made, but an attack on 
Quebec was an utter failure both by sea and land. De Frontenac 
also waged warfare against the Iroquois, who were British allies, 
and the struggle between the French and English was only ended 
for a short time by the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. At this time 
France was in a strong position in North America, as holding the 
country from Maine to Labrador, and the valleys of the St. Lawrence 
and the Mississippi, and as having a hold upon the great lakes. 
Hostilities were resumed in the "Queen Anne's War" of 1702 



51 8 A History of the World 

to 1 7 13. The mariners of New England attacked every French 
settlement within easy reach of the coast. Frenchmen and Indians 
made sanguinary raids in Massachusetts. In 17 11 a strong ex- 
pedition from Boston, including 15 men-of-war and about 50 
transports and store-ships, with seven British regiments and two 
battalions of Massachusetts militia, sailed to attack Quebec, while 
2,000 men from other colonies marched overland. The enterprise, 
from lack of skill in both the military and naval commanders, was a 
disgraceful failure. Careless navigation threw eight transports on reefs 
in the St. Lawrence, with the loss of many sailors and 1,000 troops, the 
latter chiefly belonging to splendid regiments which had fought and 
conquered at Blenheim and Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. 
This disaster gave a new lease of life to Canada, under a new 
governor, De Vaudreuil, who was careful to strengthen her defences 
for any future contest, and extended a line of western forts towards 
the Mississippi valley. On the other hand, an expedition from 
Boston captured Port Royal, in Acadie (Nova Scotia), in 17 10, 
the name of the town being changed to Annapolis, in honour of 
the queen, and the Treaty of Utrecht, as we have seen, placed the 
country, with Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay and Straits, in British 
possession. The vast, vague region then known as Hudson's Bay 
Territory was claimed by the Company formed by Prince Rupert, 
under Charles II., and trading-posts were established at many points 
for barter with the Indian trappers and hunters in the trade of furs 
and skins. In the " King William's War" of 1690 to 1697, French 
expeditions captured Fort York and other posts, but the Treaty 
of Utrecht again made the Company masters of the whole coast. 
As regards north-western exploration, the Frenchmen named Les 
Verendryes, father and son, before the middle of the 18th century, 
were the first to explore, if not to discover, Lakes Winnipeg and 
Manitoba, the rivers Assiniboine and Saskatchewan, and a large 
extent of territory for hundreds of miles west and north of Lake 
Superior. Somewhat later, a British traveller, Samuel Hearne, 
reached the Great Slave Lake, and made his way to the Arctic 
Ocean, discovering the mouth of the Coppermine River ; and the 
energetic and hardy Alexander Mackenzie, a native of the Highlands, 
in the service of the North-West Fur Company, a rival body to the 
Hudson Bay Company, voyaged in a birch-bark canoe from Lake 
Athabasca, in 1789, by the Slave River and Great Slave Lake, to 
the Polar Sea, down the whole course of the great river that bears 
his name. In 1793 the same great traveller crossed the Rocky 



The Trans-Atlantic Problem 519 

Mountains, and reached the Pacific Ocean at a point now in British 
Columbia. He had thus beaten all records in North America 
by arriving at the Oceans to the north and the west along routes 
previously unknown to Europeans. 

Under De Vaudreuil, whose government of Canada ended with 
his death in 1725, the French colony remained at peace, and the 
population reached about 30,000 in number, engaged in the fur-trade, 
ship-building at Quebec, small industries in woollen and linen cloth 
and iron, and the export of timber, tar, pork, and flour to P"rance 
and to her AVest Indian islands, in exchange for the manufactures 
of the home-country, and for the molasses, rum, and sugar of the 
tropical possessions in the Gulf of Mexico. Various causes rendered 
true prosperity impossible. An " Intendant " exercised a paternal 
system of rule in fiscal and other affairs. Religious intolerance 
excluded enterprising Protestants. A feudal system of land-tenure 
hampered , tillage. There was little education, and small influx of 
new settlers from Europe. Under the marquis de Beauharnois, who 
was in power from 1725 to 1746, there was general peace in North 
America between the French and English, except in the last three 
years, when the " King George's War," connected with the War of 
the Austrian Succession, broke out. The French had already given 
clear signs of the policy which ended in their expulsion from North 
America as holders of dominion. In striving to keep the British 
to the coast, and to secure the sole, command of the western regions, 
they erected forts at various points, as Fort Niagara on the south- 
west shore of Lake Ontario, and Fort Frederick (afterwards Crown 
Point) on Lake Champlain. In Cape Breton Island they held a 
strong position in the fortress of Louisbourg, from whose port 
privateers issued to prey upon British commerce in the neighbouring 
waters. In 1745 a powerful expedition, organised by Shirley, the 
energetic governor of Massachusetts, and aided by men-of-war from 
the AVest Indian squadron, carrying some thousands of New 
England troops, was dispatched against the enemy's stronghold. 
Bombardment quickly ruined the works, and forced a surrender 
after a siege of seven weeks. A strong expedition sent from France 
to recover the place was disabled by Atlantic storms, and the 
British colonies were feeling the benefit of the possession of 
Louisbourg when, with an imbecility which has often followed 
British conquests, the home-government, in the Treaty of Aix-la- 
Chapelle (1748), restored the fortress to the French. 

In 1753 it became clear that a crisis of affairs between French 



520 A History of the World 

and English power and interests was approaching. M. Duquesne, 
the new French governor of Canada, had instructions to oppose a 
firm resistance to British advance towards the west, where a new 
" Ohio Company," formed in Virginia, with a royal charter, was com- 
mencing operations. In 1754 the French took possession of the 
rising buildings of a fort at the junction of the two rivers forming the 
Ohio, and completed it as Fort Duquesne. Other armed posts were 
constructed by the enemy, and a young Virginian officer, to be 
immortal later as George Washington, was forced to surrender a 
British defensive point. 

In 1755 two regiments took ship at Cork for Virginia, the 44th 
and the 48th, under the command of General Braddock, a veteran 
officer. The British colonists and the home-government at this 
time, on the eve of the Seven Years' War, aimed at the possession 
of Fort Duquesne, a standing menace to Virginia and Pennsylvania; 
of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, bases for operations against New 
York and other colonies ; of Fort Niagara, commanding the north- 
western trade in furs ; of Louisbourg, lately captured and foolishly 
restored ; and of Quebec, the key to the St. Lawrence and the 
chief stronghold of Canada. The disastrous issue of Braddock's 
march against Fort Duquesne is well known. Ambushed Indians 
and French Canadians destroyed two-thirds of the force, with the 
loss of all the cannon, baggage, and stores, and the military chest. 
Braddock died a few days later of his wounds. An expedition 
against Fort Niagara was abandoned, on the desertion of the colonial 
militia, and the hostile attitude of the Iroquois. Three months 
later, in September, British credit was partly restored in the severe 
repulse, near Lake George, of a strong force of French regulars, 
Canadians, and Indians, by New England militia under the able 
colonial leader William Johnson, who received a baronetcy for his 
success. 

In 1756 the marquis de Montcalm arrived as commander of 
the French forces. He was a man in the prime of life, of high 
repute for skill and courage, and he brought with him two battalions 
of royal troops, a large supply of warlike stores, and an able second- 
in-command, the Chevalier de Levis, a brave officer who had 
fought at Dettingen. Montcalm soon made his presence felt by his 
British opponents. Fort Oswego, on the south-eastern shore of 
Lake Ontario, was attacked and taken with 1,600 prisoners, seven 
small men-of-war, 200 barges, 100 cannon, and a large supply 
of stores. The person chiefly responsible for this disgrace was 



The Trans-Atlantic Problem 521 

the incompetent commander of the British forces in America, 
the earl of Loudon, who had ample resources at his disposal. 
Another discreditable failure came in 1757, when a powerful 
armament, including many sail of the line and some frigates, with 
6,000 troops, was assembled at Halifax, Nova Scotia, for an attack 
on Quebec, and broke up in the autumn without producing any 
effect except a general impression of the utter incapacity of the 
direction of British naval and military affairs. Before a change 
came, more disasters were to try the patience of the British public 
at home. In July, 1757, a small British force, moving on 
Ticonderoga, was almost destroyed by an Indian ambush. In 
August, Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake George, 
was captured, after bombardment, by Montcalm, and over 2,000 
British troops, with their arms and colours, marched out on condition 
of not serving in the war for 18 months. Many of the men, with 
women and children, were slain by the Indians, after surrender in 
presence of the French force, though Montcalm and De Levis used 
all efforts to save them, short of directing the weapons of French 
soldiers against their Indian allies. In July, 1758, General 
Abercrombie advanced from Albany against Ticonderoga, at the 
head of the largest army ever gathered in America. The force was 
composed of above 6,000 regulars, including the Royal Highlanders, 
or 42nd regiment, afterwards famous as the " Black Watch," and 
about the same number of the New York and New England militia. 
The fort was defended by Montcalm with 3,500 regular troops, and, 
in the lack of heavy guns to destroy the works or effect a serviceable 
breach, it was vainly assailed by the British infantry. Nearly 2,000 
men were killed and wounded, including 500 of the 42nd regiment. 
In other quarters matters had a different issue. 

A new man had come to the front in Great Britain, William Pitt 
the elder, afterwards earl of Chatham. This noble patriot, directing 
foreign affairs in nominal subordination to a corrupt and incapable 
premier, the duke of Newcastle, was something different from " a 
lath painted to resemble iron." He was not a man to write state- 
papers arguing ably for his country's side in a dispute, and then 
yield every point at issue by a policy of " graceful concession." 
Capable of choosing fit men to do the country's work by sea and 
land, he had an ardent soul whose fire seemed to kindle the spirit 
of every officer and man, every sailor, ship's boy, and marine. 
Hurling proud defiance at the foes of Great Britain, he followed 
up words with blows of dire effect, and turned a scene of 



522 A History of the World 

discomfiture and discredit into an arena of complete victory, where 
the foundation of a grand colonial dominion was laid. Pitt, resolved 
to annihilate French power in America, would not fail for lack 
of sufficient force. The American colonies were requested to 
supply 20,000 men, and about 12,000 regular troops were dispatched 
from England on transports convoyed by 23 sail of the line and 
18 frigates. In charge of the ships was Admiral Boscawen, or 
" Old Dreadnought," as his men called him from a vessel once 
under his command. Major-General Amherst, on the recall of 
Lord Loudon, had become commander-in-chief in America, with 
James Wolfe as one of his brigadiers, a young officer who had 
fought at Dettingen and Culloden, and had risen by sheer merit 
to the command, in 1749, of the 20th of the line, a regiment nobly 
distinguished, ten years later, at the battle of Minden. Amherst 
had served at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and in other Continental 
battles, and had shown ability and the coolness of demeanour 
essential in a military chief. The first object of attack was Louis- 
bourg. A landing was made on July 8th, 1758; eight days later, 
some heights with batteries were stormed. The works were 
knocked to pieces by bombardment ; the French men-of-war in 
the harbour were all burnt or taken, and on July 27th the 
renowned fortress surrendered, and with it the island of Cape 
Breton came finally into British possession. 5,000 soldiers 
and sailors went as prisoners of war to England; 200 cannon, 
vast supplies, and 1 1 standards were taken, the latter being 
placed in St. Paul's Cathedral. The works were demolished ; 
Boston and all the New Englanders on the seaboard rejoiced ; 
Louisbourg was a deserted ruin ; Halifax became the chief strong- 
hold of the north-east coast. The disaster at Ticonderoga, which 
had occurred 19 days before the success at Louisbourg, was quickly 
remedied, though nothing could atone for the loss of the brave 
Scots and others who had fallen. In August the capture of 
Fort Frontenac (now Kingston), on the north-east shore of Lake 
Ontario, ended French supremacy in those waters, and the 
destruction of great stores of ammunition and food starved the 
chain of posts in the Ohio valley. In the following November 
the gallant John Forbes, former colonel of the Scots Greys, and 
now brigadier under Amherst, with young Colonel Washington in 
charge of a Virginia regiment, advanced on Fort Duquesne, and 
found it an abandoned ruin, blackened by the smoke of powder 
used to destroy works which the French despaired of holding. 



The Trans-Atlantic Problem 523 

The rule of France in the Ohio valley thus came to an end, and 
the minister at home, the inspiring genius of those who were 
in the field, was honoured by the change of name to Fort Pitt, on 
the site of the modern flourishing town of Pittsburg, a Birmingham 
of the United States. 

At thcopening of the year 1759 it was clear to competent observers 
that the French hold on North America was much loosened. The 
worthless government at home disregarded the brave and able 
Montcalm's appeals for help. The whole of the males of Canada, 
from 16 years of age to 60, could not furnish 15,000 fresh men 
fit for service. There were only a few regiments of royal troops, 
and these were far below their full strength. The British Parlia- 
ment, under the impulse of Pitt's commanding spirit, voted abundant 
funds for the contest, and the royal troops and colonial levies 
made up more than 50,000 well-equipped soldiers. In June 
Amherst took the field in force, and found Ticonderoga deserted. 
Crown Point, also abandoned and destroyed, was restored in a 
stronger form, and powerful garrisons there and at the former 
place gave the British firm possession of Lake Champlain. In 
the west, Fort Niagara, commanding the passage from Lake Ontario 
to Lake Erie, surrendered to Brigadier Prideaux, and all the other 
western forts in French hands, Detroit alone excepted, were speedily 
taken. This narrative must now draw to a close with a brief refer- 
ence to glorious events known to every British schoolboy. The 
key of French power in North America lay in the town and fortress 
of Quebec, garrisoned by 13,000 men of every age, including five 
royal regiments. Pitt was resolved to make an end, and Wolfe was 
placed in command of 8,000 men, including regiments whose colours 
showed that they had fought in some or all of Marlborough's great 
battles, and others that had conquered at Louisbourg. Royal 
artillery, a body of engineers, and some companies of the " Louis- 
bourg Grenadiers " were included in the force. The fleet numbered 
22 ships of the line, and as many more frigates and smaller vessels, 
commanded with the utmost skill and energy by an almost forgotten 
British worthy, Admiral Saunders, a fit colleague of Wolfe in pro- 
fessional skill, devotion to duty, and loyal co-operation with his 
illustrious colleague. He had sailed with Anson round the world ; 
he ended his career as " Admiral of the Fleet " : his body lies in 
Westminster Abbey, near to the monument of Wolfe. Among the 
officers of the fleet were John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent in later days, 
as victor over the French in the battle of 1797, and James Cook, 



524 A History of the World 

of renown in the southern seas. After a repulse near the Mont- 
morency Falls, some miles below Quebec, on the northern shore 
of the St. Lawrence, Wolfe, worn with anxiety and wasted by disease, 
with the season so far advanced that the fleet must soon withdraw 
to avoid the ice- blockade, won immortal fame through the flash of 
genius which guided him to a landing by a morning surprise on the 
Plains of Abraham above the town. On September 13th the battle 
of Quebec was won, both commanders, by an issue of rare occurrence, 
being mortally wounded. The great Englishman was not 33 years 
of age. His body lies by his father's side in the vaults of Greenwich 
church. The gallant Frenchman's remains, those of a noble-minded 
man, a patriot of incorruptible spirit in an age of baseness among 
Canadian officials, were buried in the garden of the Ursuline Convent 
at Quebec. In the public garden overlooking the river, a stately 
pillar does honour, with a suitable inscription, to the noble pair. 
The victory in the field was followed five days later, on September 
1 8th, 1759, by the surrender of Quebec, and in Pitt's words of 
eulogy on Wolfe, " an empire was added to British rule." De Levis, 
in the spring of 1760, when the British garrison was greatly en- 
feebled by deaths from cold and disease, and by frost-bite affecting 
the hands and feet, appeared before the fortress from Montreal, and 
tempted General Murray to an attack outside, with less than one- 
third of his enemy's force. The British, 3,000 strong, were out- 
flanked and beaten after a desperate two hours' battle, losing six 
guns and nearly 1,200 men killed and wounded. The issue of the 
struggle was not affected by this event. The works of Quebec were 
far too strong for an assault, and the arrival of a British fleet, when 
navigation was opened, drove the French back to Montreal. In the 
summer, the advance of three strong armies from the south and 
east — by Lake Champlain and the river Richelieu ; under Murray, 
from Quebec, up the St. Lawrence ; and under Amherst, by way of 
the Mohawk and Oswego rivers — -made the French position at 
Montreal hopeless. De Vaudreuil, the governor of Canada, had 
2,000 disheartened men against eight times that number surrounding 
a weak place, and he sensibly and honourably surrendered on terms 
which made Canada a province subject to the British Crown. A 
census showed the population of the colony to be a little over 
76,000. A month later, on October 25th, 1760, George III. became 
king, and in February, 1763, the Peace of Paris finally ceded Canada, 
Nova Scotia or Acadie, including New Brunswick, and Cape 
Breton, and all other islands in the gulf and river of St. Lawrence, 



France 



S 2 S 



with the reservation to France of certain rights as to fishing and 
drying fish near and on Newfoundland, and of the islands of St. 
Pierre and Miquelon, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as fishing-stations. 
Everything west of the mid-Mississippi was also surrendered, except 
New Orleans. Spain, which had also been at war with Great 
Britain, received back Havana, in Cuba, and ceded Florida and 
all other territories east of the Mississippi ; while France, by a 
separate treaty, gave up New Orleans and the whole of Louisiana, 
then a vast vague southern territory, to Spain. The number of 
inhabitants in the 13 British colonies had by this time reached 
nearly 2,000,000. We need only here further record that in the 
" Pontiac war " of 1763, an Ottawa chief of that name, a firm friend 
of the French, formed a combination of several tribes, and seized 
many forts on the Canada to Mississippi frontier ; but the whole 
movement was ultimately suppressed, by able military work under 
Colonel Bouquet, and by the skilful negotiations conducted by 
Sir William Johnson. 

Chapter V. — France; Southern Europe; the Pre- 

REVOLUTIONARY AGE. 

The death of Louis XIV. brought to the throne, at five years of 
age, his great-grandson as Louis XV. During eight years (17 15-1723) 
Philip, duke of Orleans, a man of most profligate character, was 
regent, having as his chief minister the infamous Cardinal Dubois. 
A policy of friendship with England and of religious tolerance was 
favoured by these men. From 1726 to 1743, under the honest, 
well-meaning Cardinal Fleury, an economical and peaceful policy 
was carried out, until court-intrigues forced him into the wars of 
the " Polish Succession " and the " Austrian Succession," with no 
advantage to the country. After his death, affairs fell into the 
hands ot the debauched king's favourite, the marquise de 
Pompadour, with the most deplorable results. The issues to 
France of the Seven Years' War, in Europe and America, have 
been given. After Fleury's day, in Macaulay's words, "the 
downward progress of the monarchy recommenced. Profligacy in 
the court, extravagance in the finances, schism in the Church, 
faction in the Parliaments, unjust war terminated by ignominious 
peace — all that indicates and all that produces the ruin of great 
empires, make up the history of that miserable period. Abroad, 
the French were beaten and humbled everywhere, by land and 



526 A History of the World 

by sea, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia and in America." 
l)e Pompadour, on her death in 1764, was succeeded by the still 
viler comtesse du Barri, a woman of low origin. In 1771 the 
last relic of constitutional government passed away in the abolition 
of the Parliament of Paris, the chief law-court of the country. It 
was only under the due de Choiseul's administration, from 175810 
1770, that anything was done to improve the naval and military 
forces, and matters went again to ruin under the influence of Du 
Barri. The political and social conditions were appalling to 
discerning observers. The higher clergy were mere greedy landed 
proprietors and creatures of the court, a pampered caste, leaving 
all the duties of religion to the village cures. The nobles had 
become a set of vicious courtiers, wielding local influence and 
authority on their estates, for the most part, only in the interests of 
oppression and self-indulgence, neglecting all duties, never forgetting 
to enforce their fiscal rights. The privileged classes — the nobles and 
clergy — paid little in taxes, and to them most offices of emolument 
were confined. Sinecures in every province, in all branches of 
administration, preyed upon the earnings of the classes who 
created the wealth of the country. The man who tilled the soil 
was mulcted in half its produce. In bad seasons he and his 
wretched wife and children fed on roots, boiled nettles, and even 
on grass. Strange diseases, due to starvation and improper food, 
appeared. In the chateau all was luxury ; in the cottage leanness 
prevailed. At Versailles idleness, extravagance, pompous etiquette, 
heartless frivolity, profligacy of the vilest character, unbelief in the 
very me,n who were paid to maintain the state-religion, were presided 
over by one of the worst of worthless kings, a man who knew what 
was coming in the latter days, and who predicted, half in callous 
scorn, half in a feeble fit of remorse, " After me, the flood." Some 
accession of territory came in the annexation of the duchy of 
Lorraine, and the conquest of Corsica in 1769, after its rising against 
Genoa under Paoli. 

The death of Louis XV. in 1774 left the throne to his grandson 
Louis XVI., with a hopeless prospect of affairs, past remedy, in all 
probability, by any man or set of men of whatsoever ability in govern- 
ment or devotion to duty. The new sovereign, a dull, well-meaning 
sort of man who might have been a good artisan in machine-work, 
was already married to the frivolous and indiscreet Marie Antoinette, 
daughter of Maria Theresa. She never interfered in political affairs 
without doing harm, and she paid a fearful penalty for her faults 



France 527 

in supporting the old system of favourites and in resisting reforms. 
The financial difficulty was taken in hand by the able and honest 
Turgot, but he was driven from power in 1776, when he proposed 
to tax the nobles and the clergy on an equal basis with the trading 
classes and the tillers of the soil. The Church and the aristocracy 
" would not have reform, and they had revolution. They would not 
pay a small contribution to the state-expenses in place of the odious 
corvees (or enforced labour of the peasants on the lord's estate and 
on the public roads without pay), and they lived to see their castles 
demolished and their lands sold to strangers. They would not 
endure Turgot; and they were forced to endure Robespierre." 
Necker, a Swiss banker of Paris, was finance-minister from 1777 to 
T781, and abolished some hundreds of superfluous offices. His 
reforms were not far-reaching enough to stay the continual deficits, 
and only irritated the privileged classes. The gap between 
income and expenditure was ever increasing, and the country went 
swiftly down the slope. Under Calonne, a favourite of the queen, 
from 1783 to 1787, the debt grew largely from the extravagant 
expenditure of the court, the position of affairs having been already 
greatly aggravated by war with England after the revolt of the 
American colonies. No more suicidal step could have been taken 
by a French government than one which increased the financial 
difficulty ; encouraged rebellion of subjects against a sovereign ; 
aided the American colonists to a success which greatly stirred the 
rising democratic spirit in France ; and brought back to the country 
troops infected with the revolutionary poison. The " Assembly of 
the Notables," a meeting of the chief nobles, officials, and dis- 
tinguished persons of every rank, in 1787, was a feeble attempt to 
stem the tide. Calonne was dismissed from office when he urged 
the nobles and clergy to yield their privileges and pay a land-tax ; 
the assembly was dissolved; and in August, 1788, Necker was 
recalled, and it was resolved to summon a States-General, or national 
parliament, a body unknown since 16 14, in the days of Richelieu. 
There, on the edge of the precipice, we leave the French king and 
privileged classes. 

In Spain, we left Philip V., first of the Bourbon kings, settled 
on the throne by the Treaty of Utrecht, with the loss of Spanish 
possessions, as we shall see, in Italy, and of Sardinia, Minorca, 
Gibraltar, and Flanders. The supporters of his rival, the Archduke 
Charles of Austria, in Catalonia and Aragon, were severely punished, 
and all their old constitutions and rights were abolished. For a few 



528 A History of the World 

years, from 17 14 to 1720, under the able Italian statesman Cardinal 
Alberoni, much was done to develop the resources of the country, to 
increase foreign trade, and to remodel the military and naval forces, 
but his ambitious foreign schemes, against England and France and 
Austria, seeking to involve all Europe in war, caused his downfall. 
Ferdinand VI. (1746-1759), son of Philip, kept the country generally 
at peace, and his half-brother Charles III. (^o^^SS), wno ha ^ 
been successively duke of Parma and king of Naples and Sicily, was 
a wise ruler who called to his councils the best Spaniards of the age ; 
reformed the grossly corrupt colonial administration ; promoted 
manufactures and trade ; and failed only in his attempt to recover 
Gibraltar. The population and wealth of the country increased, and 
Spain was enabled to take a considerable part in the naval warfare 
of the later years of the century and of Napoleon's earlier time as 
emperor. 

We saw Portugal recover complete independence in 1668, under 
the regency of Dom Pedro, married to the queen on her divorce from 
the wretched Alfonso VI., who was dethroned and banished to the 
Azores. On this man's death in 1683 he became king as Pedro II., 
and maintained the same course of strict economy and peace,, 
enabling the country to recover from exhaustion due to past troubles.. 
In 1703 a close alliance was formed with Great Britain in the 
famous Methuen political and commercial treaty, whereby the 
Portuguese wines, notably port, entered England at lower duties than 
those of France and Germany, in exchange for manufactured goods 
on the same terms, while friendly relations of great advantage to 
Portugal were established. English colonies of merchants arose in 
Lisbon and Oporto ; English capital caused an increase of wealth ; 
and the importation of English articles of luxury and comfort gave 
Portugal a marked difference in domestic display from the other 
southern countries of Europe. No advance, however, was made 
towards political freedom and representative institutions, and the 
ignorant people remained sluggishly content under absolute rule. 
Under Joseph I. (175 0-1777) there was a temporary increase of 
vigour in national life through the influence of the able and. resolute 
marquis de Pombal, the greatest of all Portuguese statesmen, and one 
of the chief men of mark in the 18th century. He was the Richelieu 
of Portugal, supported in all his measures by the sovereign whose 
power he made greater than ever in breaking down the authority of 
the nobles. The army was remodelled ; the internal administration 
was reformed ; slavery was abolished ; the Jesuit order was sup- 



Southern Europe 529 

pressed. After the memorable earthquake of Lisbon in 1755, which 
laid the capital in ruins, with the loss of at least 30,000 lives, 
Ponibal displayed his admirable energy in the work of restoration. 
In later years, hundreds of useless petty offices were abolished ; the 
Inquisition was made almost powerless for harm ; education, agri- 
culture, and, especially, the growth of the vine, were encouraged ; and 
Pombal was equally admired by king and subjects. Banished from 
court by Joseph's successor, his eldest daughter, Maria Francisca, 
Pombal died, at an advanced age, in T783. The new ruler was 
almost an imbecile, and was practically deprived of power in 1792. 

In Italy we find Venice, in the latter half of the 17th century, 
much engaged in conflict with the Turks. In 1645 the Ottomans, 
without any declaration of war, sent a great armament against Candia 
(Crete), composed of over 400 galleys and 50,000 troops. Canea, 
at the north-western point of the island, was forced to surrender, after 
the Venetian commandant of the citadel had blown up the fort with 
himself and the garrison. From this secure base of operations, the 
invaders spent 24 years in subduing the whole of Crete. Great 
exertions were made by the republic, and her appeals for aid brought 
volunteers from all parts of Europe, with troops and money from 
the Pope, soldiers under the Knights of St. John from Malta, and 
some help from Louis of France and the duke of Savoy. Great 
heroism was displayed by the Venetian commanders and men, and 
some brilliant naval victories were won, in the Dardanelles and off 
the island of Paros. In 1660 Francesco Morosini took the command 
of the republic's forces in Crete, where the chief town, Candia, 
had been for years besieged. From May to November in 1667 
the place underwent 32 assaults; 17 sorties were made; 618 
mines were sprung by the assailants and defenders ; over 3,000 of 
the besieged, besides 400 officers, perished, and the Turks lost 20,000 
men. During the whole operations, extending over 20 years, the 
loss of the Turks much exceeded 100,000, and that of the Christians 
was over one-fourth of that number ; the fortress fired above half 
a million cannon-shot, and 9,000 .tons of lead were used for musket- 
balls by the besieged. It was towards the end of this remarkable 
leaguer that the Due de la Feuillade, as we have seen, headed a 
body of French " crusading " nobles, but their fiery valour was 
vainly expended in attacks on the enemy's trenches, contrary to 
Morosini's advice, and the remnant died of plague and other disease. 
Then Louis sent a reinforcement of 12 regiments of foot, a small 
body of cavalry, and some of the famous " household " troops, 



530 A History of the World 

under the Due de Noailles as general, the Due de Beaufort being 
admiral of the fleet. They found Candia reduced to the last 
extremity — every building in utter ruins or much injured; mines 
ever springing ; the streets strewn with the dying and dead ; pestilence 
rife. The new-comers, with a rashness again vainly opposed by 
Morosini, at once made a sortie against the Turkish lines, only to 
be defeated. 200 heads of fallen Frenchmen, including those of 
the Due de Beaufort and some of his chief officers, were cut off 
and borne in triumph before Kiupergli, the grand vizier ; and 
this disaster caused the other French troops, with the Maltese, 
Papal soldiers, and other foreign contingents, to abandon the enter- 
prise in despair. The end of Morosini's heroic defence was come. 
He received honourable terms, due to the respect inspired by his 
conduct and that of his countrymen, and in September, 1669, Crete 
passed into the possession of Turkey. 

The Venetian republic was fast decaying through an obstinate 
adherence to the old oligarchical system, and was verging on 
bankruptcy when the long Cretan warfare ended. During 14 
years of peace the finances were somewhat restored, and in 1684 
Venice joined a new league against Turkey, and, with the same 
Francesco Morosini in supreme command, gained glory in the 
struggle. In 1685 a series of victories at Navarino, Argos, Nauplia, 
and other places gave possession of the Morea (Peloponnesus) in 
Greece. Then came the attack on Athens, with results to be 
lamented by lovers of art. In a bombardment of six days the whole 
town was fired. The glorious statue of Athena by Phidias was 
destroyed, and the Parthenon, turned by the Turks, on their capture 
of the city in 1456, from a Christian church into a mosque, and then 
into a powder-magazine, was greatly damaged by an explosion. 
Morosini, eager to save a few trophies, sent the marble lions from 
the Piraeus to Venice, where they yet guard the entrance to the 
arsenal. The victor was received at home with rapturous delight, 
and had an unprecedented honour in the placing of his bust, during 
his lifetime, in the Hall of the Council of Ten. This " last of the 
Venetians" was chosen Doge in 1688, by the unanimous public 
voice, and died at Nauplia in 1694, in command of a fleet on its 
way to the Archipelago. Many naval victories were won by the 
Venetians before the Peace of Carlowitz ended the war in 1699. 
During the War of the Spanish Succession the republic was neutral, 
but her territory was again and again overrun by the armies of 
Villeroi and Catinat, of the Due de Vendome and the Duke of Savoy, 



Southern Europe 531 

and of Prince Eugene. In 17 14 Turkey declared war, and Venice 
lost, town by town, her possession of the Morea, where the people 
had not come to love their new masters. Corfu was saved to the 
republic, after a brave defence, and the Peace of Passarowitz, in 
17 18, left her in possession of the Ionian Islands; of parts of 
Albania and Dalmatia ; of Istria and Friuli ; and of Bergamo, Brescia, 
Verona, Vicenza, Rovigo, and other places on the Italian mainland. 
During the rest of the 18th century, down to the wars following on 
the French Revolution, Venice presents the melancholy spectacle 
of decay. The nobles, from whose ranks glorious leaders had 
emerged in the past days, became mere lovers of pleasure, sunk in 
indolence and vice. Impoverished members of the aristocracy kept 
public gaming-tables, and even, in some cases, begged in the streets. 
The Council of Ten, with popular support, ruled with an iron sway, 
and put to death, without public trial, known conspirators and 
suspected men. Some useful reforms were made in the opening 
of the port to free trade ; in the curtailing of donations and legacies 
to religious institutions ; in the restriction of the absurd number of 
festivals and holidays; in the expulsion of the Jesuits; and in the 
suppression, in 1780, of the Ridotto, or chief public gaming-house. 
Four years later, the expiring state gave a last sign of life in vigorous 
action against the corsairs of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli. A fleet 
was dispatched to the African coast, and in a three-years' war much 
was done to rid the Mediterranean of a long-standing peril and 
disgrace. 

In the last half of the 17th century the Spanish sovereigns of 
the Hapsburg house merely plundered their Italian dominions by 
ruthless taxation. In 1647 an impost on fruit, almost the only food of 
the poor left untouched by fiscal greed, caused an insurrection headed 
by the famous Tommaso or 'Mas Aniello, who was assassinated at 
the instance of the viceroy. In Sicily, the populace rose at Palermo, 
but the movement was soon quelled. Early in the 18th century the 
duke of Savoy (king of Sicily) became " king of Sardinia," taking 
that island in exchange for Sicily, received by him, as we have seen, 
under the Peace of Utrecht. The ruler of Savoy, Piedmont, and 
Sardinia 'was the one independent, strong, Italian sovereign, and 
much was done for the state under the liberal and enlightened 
despot Victor Amadeus II., who reigned until 1730, and distinguished 
himself by depriving the Jesuits of all control over public education. 
The republic of Genoa, ever obliged to defend her freedom and 
independence against aggressive neighbours, lost Corsica by revolt 
35 



532 A History of the World 

in 1730, and finally, after recovering it by French arms from the 
patriot Paoli, ceded the island to France in 1768. In the Papal 
States, or central Italy, during this period, we note a general decline 
of industry, prosperity, and intellectual life. The Popes were 
all Italians, generally members of great families. Innocent XL 
(1676-1689) was an able, honest man, of austere life, an opponent 
of luxury, and of nepotism and simony in the Church. In conflict 
with the Gallican (French) Church, under Louis XIV., Papal 
infallibility received a severe blow in 1682. A convocation 
of clergy in Paris, summoned by the king, adopted a declaration 
drawn up by the eloquent Bossuet, bishop of Meaux. The " Four 
Articles " maintained that the Pope, in secular matters, has no 
power over kings and princes, and cannot loose subjects from their 
allegiance; that the Pope is subject to the decrees of a General 
Council ; that the Pope's authority in France is regulated by fixed 
canons and by the laws and customs of the kingdom and Church ; 
and that, in matters of faith, the Pope's decision is not unalterable. 
The king then issued a decree confirming these statements. In 17 13 
Clement XL (1700-17 21) issued his famous "bull" Unigenitus 
against the Jansenists, the strong opponents of the Jesuits' teaching 
on moral points, the document being accepted by the French 
bishops, but resisted by a large body of the clergy and the laity. 
In France, at this time, infidelity of the Voltairean school was yearly 
rising, with considerable effect on political affairs at a later day. 
Benedict XIV., who was Pope from 1740 to 1758, is distinguished as, 
not the greatest, but the best and wisest of all the men who have 
filled the Papal chair. Learned ; cultured in literature and art ; in 
the best sense an accomplished man of the world ; able and 
conscientious in the discharge of all his duties ; liberal-minded, 
moderate, and observant of the spirit of the age ; sincerely pious, 
forbearing towards others, strict with himself, this admirable and 
delightful man, an honour to human nature, commanded the high 
esteem of Protestant and Catholic sovereigns, and was beloved by 
all who came within reach of his benign influence. He died after 
painful illness, cheerful and lively to the last. Clement XIII. 
(1758-1769), led by the Jesuits, strongly maintained the most arro- 
gant Papal claims, in defiance of the Bourbon princes who ruled in 
France, Spain, and most of Italy. His successor, Clement XIV. 
(1 769-1 775), was a man of opposite character, liberal by disposition 
and training, and in 1773 he deprived the Papacy of an able body 
of strenuous defenders by a " Brief" which abolished the Society of 



The American Revolutionary War 533 

Jesus. The last Pope of the period was Pius VI. (1775-1799), who 
lived to see the confiscation of Church-property, the suppression 
of religious orders, the occupation of Rome by French troops, and 
the proclamation of a " Roman Republic." He died a prisoner on 
French soil. 

The war of the Austrian Succession, ended in 1748 by the Peace 
of Aix-la-Chapeile, left Italy in peace for more than 40 years, with 
most of the territory in the hands of the Bourbons, ruling in Naples 
and Sicily, Parma, Modena, and Genoa ; while the House of Savoy 
held Sardinia and Piedmont, and the Austrians retained Milan and 
Tuscany. The sovereigns were absolute, generally in their own 
selfish interest, with a very honourable exception in Peter Leopold, 
grand-duke of Tuscany from 1765 until his succession to the empire 
as Leopold II. in 1790. This enlightened reformer restricted priestly 
power, and made an end of the Inquisition. The financial adminis- 
tration and the criminal law were much changed for the better. He 
left a noble monument of his beneficent rule in the fertile Val di 
Chiana, a tract 50 miles in length between two mountain-ranges, and 
bounded by the rivers Arno and Paglia. Under his direction, this 
district was changed by skilful engineering from a malarious swamp 
into a region of bounteous production. 



Chapter VI. — The American Revolutionary War. 

We need not linger long over a subject so familiar from British 
history. The American colonies had several grounds of complaint 
against the mother-country. By the Navigation Acts and other 
legislation, British merchants, manufacturers, and tillers of the soil 
were favoured at the expense of American subjects of George III. 
The direct cause of quarrel was the attempt to levy taxation from 
those who were not represented in the British Parliament. Hostility 
and resistance were aroused by harsh measures, and hence came riots, 
suspension of colonial assemblies or legislatures, the destruction of 
tea- at Boston in December, 1773, the vindictive closing of the port 
to trade, the revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1774; and 
the assembly of a congress at Philadelphia in the same year, where 
leading spirits were found in Samuel and John Adams of Massa- 
chusetts, and in George Washington and Patrick Henry of Virginia. 
Matters became serious when " a declaration of rights " was drawn up, 
and the concentration of British troops at Boston was followed by 
the organisation of the Massachusetts militia and the collection of 



534 -A- History of the World 

arms and stores. In 1775 came the skirmishes of Lexington and 
Concord ; the seizure of Ticonderoga and Crown Point by the 
colonists ; the battle of Bunker's Hill ; the fruitless invasion of 
Canada ; the appointment of Washington to chief military command ; 
and, in June, 1776, the "declaration of independence" voted in 
Congress, and adopted finally on July 4th. The hero of the struggle 
was George Washington ; the turning-point was Burgoyne's surrender 
at Saratoga in October, 1777, an event which is well described in 
Creasy's Decisive Battles. In the following month articles of 
confederation for " The United States of America " were agreed upon 
in Congress, and the flag with the stars and stripes began to wave. 
Early in 1778 France recognised the independence of the revolted 
colonies, and ships and troops were sent to aid them. Many 
battles were fought with various success, and on October 19th the 
surrender of Lord Cornwallis, with 7,000 men, to the colonial and 
French forces at Yorktown, in Virginia, gave a final triumph to the 
"rebels," and drove from office the British premier, Lord North, 
who was mainly responsible, with his obstinate and wrong-headed 
sovereign George III., for the disastrous contest. 

The struggle, apart from America, had been for Great Britain one 
for very existence as a naval and maritime power. Spain, Holland, 
and France, each possessed of a formidable fleet, were combined 
against her, and the people dwelling on the southern coast had to 
endure a humiliating and unwonted sight in 1779, when 66 sail 
of the line, with a large number of frigates, were afloat in the 
Channel, defying attack, under the flags of France and Spain. In 
January, 1780, our naval reputation was somewhat restored by Sir 
George Rodney's defeat of a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, with 
the loss of eight line-of-battle ships. In February, 1781, when 
Holland had joined our foes, the same admiral captured the Dutch 
West India island St. Eustatia, with a vast store of tropical produce 
and 250 merchantmen. Spain deprived us of Minorca and West 
Florida, and a French fleet, under the Comte de Grasse, did much 
mischief to our trade and possessions in the West Indies. A turn 
of affairs came in 1782, and British credit in war against France and 
Spain was restored by two splendid achievements. On April 12th, 
in the West Indies, off Dominica and Guadeloupe, Rodney and Sir 
Samuel Hood won a glorious victory over De Grasse. The enemy's 
fleet, of 33 first-rates, carried a large number of troops for the 
conquest of Jamaica. The British admirals, with 36 sail of the line, 
fell upon them, and, in a battle of 11 hours' duration, captured 



The American Revolutionary War 535 

the flagship, the pride of the French navy, the Ville de Paris, of 
no guns, with the admiral on board; five other great ships were 
taken, one was sunk, and the whole array was broken up in head- 
long flight. A few days later Hood captured two seventy-fours and 
two frigates, and the whole enterprise against Jamaica was wrecked. 
In September of the same year General George Eliott, afterwards 
ennobled as Lord Heathfield, repulsed the last great attack of French 
and Spanish naval and military forces on Gibraltar, and the valiant 
garrison, vainly assailed by bombardment, blockade, and starvation 
during a siege of over two years, remained still masters of the 
"Rock." In 1783 the Peace of Versailles ended the war, with 
the recognition of the independence of the United States, and the 
cession of Florida and Minorca to Spain. 

The quarrel with the colonists thus had its issue in one of the 
greatest events of modern history, far more memorable in its con- 
sequences than the great war with France at the close of the 1 8th 
century and in the earlier years of the 19th. A great new state 
arose in the world, British in origin, language, and tradition, but 
taking a line of its own in political affairs, independent of British 
and even of European precedents. It was a state that, in spite 
of menaces and probabilities of dissolution, has remained united, 
and has grown so as to be far superior in population and territory 
to all European states save Russia, the colonial territory and people 
of the British Empire being of course excepted. In the whole 
history of the world there had been no previous example of the 
foundation of such a mighty state on new territory — a state so 
highly organised at the starting-point of its career, and one in which 
the free will of man is in so high a degree active and alive. There 
is in all history no example of two great nations so closely allied to 
each other in blood, so closely connected by the bonds of trade, so 
strongly influencing each other in various ways, as Great Britain and 
the United States. The whole future of the world, in fact, depends 
upon the mutual influence of the offshoots of the British stock of 
the human race. 



536 A Hi5tory of the World 



BOOK III. 

FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRENCH 
REVOLUTION TO THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

(1789-1S15.) 

Chapter I. — The French Revolution and Napoleon ; Great 
Britain and Ireland (1 789-1802). 

The series of events known as the French Revolution has a literature 
of its own, and we can only here indicate its chief stages and most 
prominent events. The picturesque, grotesque, and horrible side 
of the earlier period is well presented in Carlyle's French Revolution 
and Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. The philosophy of the subject 
is an endless matter, belonging to other works than this. In its 
wider sense, the revolutionary period covers 25 years, from 1789 to 
181 5, divided into four stages. The first includes events from the 
opening of the States-General in May, 1789, to the middle of 1793. 
The second, or "Reign of Terror," takes us to October, 1795. The 
third covers the period of the Directory and the Consulate, until 
Napoleon's election as emperor, in May 1804. The fourth stage 
is that of the French Empire under Napoleon I., with a brief 
interval of restored Bourbon rule, until July, 1815. 

The chief cause of the political convulsion in France has been 
already indicated — misery due to long misrule such as has rarely 
cursed mankind. The spirit of revolution was in the air, a spirit 
devoted to the reformation or destruction of all existing institutions ; 
a spirit expressed in bitter mockery, keen wit, scorn, searching 
analysis, enlightened philosophy, and advanced philanthropy by 
such writers as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, and 
Condorcet, some of them numbered among the Encyclopedistcs, or 
authors of the Encyclopedic, a work which appeared between 1751 
and 1765, and was characterised by a disregard of all mere authority, 
and by a free spirit of inquiry and criticism on religious, social, and 
political matters. Without directly aiming at political changes, these 
men, wielding a very extensive and powerful influence, prepared the 
way for them by their exposure of abuses of every kind. It was in 
May, 1789, that on the advice of Necker, recalled to office in the 
previous year, the States-General, or National Parliament, met at 







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The French Revolution and Napoleon 537 

Versailles, composed of 300 representatives of the nobles, 300 of 
the clergy, and 600 of the Tiers Etat, or Third Estate of the realm, 
meaning the Commons, or mass of the nation. After various 
disputes as to methods of sitting and voting, the Tiers Etat, under 
the leadership of the resolute, able, and eloquent Mirabeau, a man 
of the noble class, styled themselves the " National Assembly," and 
were joined by the clerical and noble members. This was a first 
triumph for the popular element. The king, Louis XVI., listening 
to Marie Antoinette and the party of reaction at court, aroused 
distrust by gathering around him at Versailles a large body of 
troops, including foreign — Hungarian and German — regiments, and 
by arming the bridge of Sevres with cannon pointed towards the 
capital. This step, followed by the dismissal of Necker from office 
on July nth, caused an immediate outbreak in Paris. On July 14th 
the fortress-prison styled the Bastille was stormed by the people, 
and a provisional government was set up at the Hotel de Ville. 
The revolution had begun, and it was in vain that the king, in a 
panic, recalled Necker. A " National Guard " was formed by the 
municipality of Paris, under the command of Lafayette, a marquis 
and member of the National Assembly, a man who had fought on 
behalf of the revolted colonists in America. The famous " tricolour " 
of the French republic was now adopted as the national emblem, 
composed of blue and red, the Paris colours, with white in the 
centre, representing the monarchy. Matters now advanced with 
swift and terrible steps. The emigration of the nobles began, 
headed by the count of Artois, the king's second brother, afterwards 
Charles X. In the provinces the people rose, plundered and burnt 
many of the chateaux, and hunted the tax-gatherers out of the 
district, while local provisional governments were set up in the 
great towns. The nobles and clergy of the Assembly sought to 
allay popular rage by a voluntary surrender of all feudal rights and 
privileges — tithes, imposts, the hated gabelle or salt-tax, the preserva- 
tion of game. At the same time the sale of offices was prohibited, 
and the guilds which had restricted freedom of trade, and greatly 
raised the price of commodities, were dissolved. In October the 
famous mob of women rushed out to Versailles, urged by hunger, 
and brought the king and his family into Paris as hostages. The 
National Assembly, with numbers reduced by resignations, then sat 
in the capital, and in December all the estates of the clergy were 
confiscated for the benefit of the nation, the state assuming the 
support of ecclesiastics. In 1790 the old provinces were abolished, 



538 A History of the World 

and the country was divided into 83 departments, with names 
derived from mountains and rivers, and with subdivision into 
districts and cantons. The old parliaments and judicial constitu- 
tion were swept away, and trial by jury was established. Hereditary 
nobility and titles were abolished, and all ecclesiastical orders were 
dissolved, except such as had charge of education and the sick. 

During this time the spirit of revolution in its most advanced 
form had made its home in the political clubs of the capital entitled 
the Jacobins and the Cordeliers. The more famous of these was that 
of the Jacobins, a name bestowed first by its enemies, and one which 
became proverbial for holders of extreme liberal views on political 
and religious affairs. The members called themselves the Society o 
Friends of the Constitution, and the title of Jacobins was derived 
from the fact of their meeting in a hall of the former Jacobin 
convent in the Rue St. Honore, the Dominicans of France being 
styled Jacobins because their chief religious house in Paris was 
that of St. Jacques (Latin, Jacobus) in the Rue St. Jacques. The 
presiding authority was Robespierre, and under the influence of his 
fanatical energy it became the headquarters of revolutionary agita- 
tion, wielding a power exceeding that of the National Assembly, and 
directing many hundreds of branch-societies or clubs throughout 
France, with a system of intrigue and espionage that reached every 
corner, and endangered every man and woman who might be deemed 
hostile to revolutionary principles and to the doctrines of " Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity." The Cordeliers ("cord-wearers," a 
French name for the strictest branch of the Franciscans, who 
wore a girdle of knotted cord) met in the chapel of a Franciscan 
monastery, and included the bold Danton, Hebert, Camille Desmou- 
lins, and Marat, the last three being very influential as journalists 
disseminating revolutionary matter. The club of the Feuillants, 
named from a reformed body of the Cistercian order, because they 
met at an old Cistercian convent in the Rue St. Honore", was 
composed of moderate monarchists who had quitted the Jacobins, 
and included Lafayette and Bailly, president of the National 
Assembly and mayor of Paris. As revolutionary violence grew, its 
influence decayed, and in March, 1 791, it was forcibly closed by a 
raging mob. In order to estimate the forces at work in Paris, the 
centre of agitation, we must note the new organisation of the 
municipality, or commune, of the capital, then containing about 
800,000 people. The 84,000 voters, adult males, of the city were 
divided into 48 sections, each section having its primary 






The French Revolution and Napoleon 539 

assembly, and the whole being directed by a general council, with an 
executive board of 44 members. The members of the sections were 
all armed, and were ready to rise at a moment's notice to carry out 
orders received from the revolutionary leaders. 

The death of Mirabeau — the one man who might, as mediator, 
have guided the revolution to moderate and beneficent ends— in April, 
1 791, left a free course to the Jacobins. Louis had taken, for him- 
self, the fatal step of conspiring with foreign powers against his 
subjects, and arranging with the governments of Austria and Prussia 
for his deliverance by invasion. In June, 1791, with the queen "and 
two of his children, he made his escape from Paris, but was caught 
at Varennes, in the north-east, west of Verdun, and henceforth closely 
watched. In August the French people were irritated by the 
transaction known as the "Convention of Pillnitz," which was con- 
cluded at a country-house of that name near Dresden, between 
Leopold II. of Austria, Frederick William II. of Prussia, and some 
minor German princes. The contracting parties undertook to 
" interfere by effectual methods " on behalf of the French sovereign, 
and this proceeding practically sealed his fate. In September the 
National Assembly, having framed a new constitution and thus 
accomplished its purpose as a "constituent " body, dissolved itself. 
Some of its measures survived the revolutionary period and were 
embodied in the Code Napoleon. The political and other provisions 
included universal suffrage for tax-payers of a certain small amount ; 
freedom of the press ; liberty of worship ; abolition of the laws of 
entail and primogeniture, and equal subdivision of property among 
children. This body was succeeded by the " Legislative Assembly," 
composed of 745 members, mostly from the middle class, and mainly 
chosen under the influence of the Jacobin club. The party of the 
right, the Feuillants or royalists, had little power. The left, forming 
the majority, was partly composed of moderate republicans (styled 
"the Plain," as occupying lower seats), who included the Girondists, 
so named because leading members represented Bordeaux, in the new 
Gironde department, or Brissotins, from a leader named Brissot. 
This body, republicans famous from ability, eloquence, and their 
tragical end, included Gensonne, Vergniaud, Guadet, Petion, Roland, 
Barbaroux, Condorcet, Valaze, and Buzot. The " Mountain " party, 
so called from occupying the highest seats on the left side of the hall, 
was that of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, or advanced revolutionists, 
the supporters of a " united, indivisible republic." 

It was foreign interference with the domestic affairs of France 



540 A History of the World 

that wrought mischief at this time. In reply to the Pillnitz conven- 
tion, the new Assembly was compelled by the public voice to pass 
severe measures against the emigres, or self-exiled nobles, and the 
priests who refused to swear allegiance to the new constitution. 
The king was, at this crisis, refusing to sanction the decrees of the 
legislature, and maintaining a correspondence with the enemies of 
his country. In February, 1792, an alliance was made between 
Prussia and Austria, and Leopold, on his death, was succeeded by 
his son Francis. In April war was declared against Austria, and 
the inexperienced republican troops suffered defeat on the northern 
and eastern frontiers. Popular fury was aroused in Paris, and on 
June 20th the Tuileries palace was invaded by the mob, and the 
king was insulted by being compelled to assume the bonnet rouge, or 
red cap, which was a symbol of republican views. In July Prussia 
declared war, and her general, the duke of Brunswick, issued a 
manifesto, in which he threatened France with " military execution " 
if Louis were personally ill-treated. The natural result of this 
monstrous folly was another outburst of revolutionary violence in 
the French capital. On the famous " Tenth of August " the mob 
stormed the Tuileries and slaughtered the Swiss guard, who were 
ordered by Louis, in his misplaced mercy, to cease firing at the 
moment when their heroic resistance was gaining the upper hand 
of the "Sections." The king was then suspended from his func- 
tions, and kept as a close prisoner with his family in the tower of 
the " Temple," the old house of the Knights Templars. Lafayette, 
as a royalist leader, was impeached, but escaped by flight, and 
became a prisoner for some years in the hands of the Austrians. 
The capture of Verdun by the Prussians, in whose ranks many 
of the French emigres were found, caused another outburst. The 
prisons of Paris were full of royalists and " constitutionalists," and 
these people, including numerous priests and ladies, became the 
victims of the terrible " September massacres," instigated by the 
city-council and by Danton, the minister of justice. Many hundreds 
thus died in Paris, and like outrages occurred in some provincial 
cities. 

A turning-point in the history of the Revolution, of France, and 
of Europe, came in the success, on September 20th, at Valmy, in 
the woody and hilly Argonne district of the north-east, of the troops 
under Dumouriez and Kellermann, against the Prussians com- 
manded by the duke of Brunswick. Referring readers, for full 
details, again to Creasy's delightful and instructive work, the Decisive 



The French Revolution and Napoleon 541 

Battles, we may state that here, for the first time in this war, the 
French forces, defending their country against unjust aggression, 
made a firm stand, and compelled the foe to retire. The democracy 
of France was now decided in its warlike character ; the new levies 
gained confidence and courage; and the nucleus thus arose of the 
military force which was afterwards wielded with such effect by the 
greatest conqueror of modern days. On September 2 1st the "National 
Convention," superseding the Assembly, came into existence as a 
body composed entirely of republicans, 749 members in all, with 
the Girondists, or moderates, as the right wing, and the " Mountain," 
or Jacobins, on the left. Monarchy was at once abolished, and a 
republic was set up. The French troops were victorious in the 
Austrian Netherlands and on the Rhine, and the new republic at 
once took an aggressive attitude towards European monarchies by 
offering aid to all peoples desiring to change the system of rule. On 
January 21st, 1793, the king, condemned by a vast majority of votes 
for treason to France, died by beheading, and war was then declared 
against Great Britain, Holland, and Spain. In March the terrible 
" Revolutionary Tribunal " was established for the trial of offences 
against the state, and a struggle began in the Convention between 
the Girondists and the Jacobins. The extreme party, outvoted in 
the debates, but backed by the armed force of the " Sections," and 
aided by their own ferocious energy and resolution, won the day. 
In April the " Committee of Public Safety " was founded, ultimately 
composed of 12 members, invested with supreme administrative 
power. The leaders were Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, 
Carnot (the famous director of military affairs), and Collot d'Herbois. 
The commune of Paris, acting through its committee of 20, sitting 
at the Hotel de Ville, also exercised great power. Under the 
influence of this last body, 31 of the leading Girondists were 
arrested in June, and some, as Vergniaud, Gensonne, Brissot, and 
their friend Madame Roland, wife of a leading Girondist, died in 
Paris by the guillotine. Some escaped from the capital, but nearly 
all perished in the end, in the provinces, by the axe, or by suicide 
with poison or steel. 

The " Reign of Terror " had fairly begun. In July, Marat, one 
of the most bloodthirsty fanatics, died by the dagger of Charlotte 
Corday, styled by Lamartine "the angel of assassination." Revolu- 
tionary committees throughout the country executed slaughter in 
various forms — by the axe, musketry, grape-shot, drowning — at 
Bordeaux, Arras, Nantes, and other towns where opponents of the 



542 A History of the World 

extreme party were found. We need not give details of these 
atrocities, or of the atheistic follies which attended organised 
murder in Paris. The more violent revolutionists were alike foolish 
and wicked. Their absurdities and excesses paved the way for 
reaction, and for a period of despotic rule in their own country. 
They supplied the enemies of popular rights with telling arguments 
and illustrations against political concessions to the body of the 
people. They injured the cause of liberty in other lands. The 
first French Revolution, by creating a panic amongst the selfish 
and comfortable classes, and by arousing prejudice even amongst 
the sincere promoters of political development, postponed for 40 
years the granting of parliamentary reform in the British Isles. 
The over-ardent French advocates of popular freedom, by seeking 
to impose the new revolutionary system on neighbouring states, 
caused a long and desolating European war in which some millions 
of men perished on the battle-field or by disease, and the progress 
of civilisation was, in some important respects, postponed for half 
a century. As for the sufferings and losses of the French nobility, 
with all due pity for the many innocent victims included among 
them, the privileged class reaped only what it had sown. A whole 
people had been oppressed. The lower class, in town and country 
alike, had been allowed to exist in misery and ignorance, and, 
suddenly possessed of power, they inevitably misused it. It may, 
however, be confidently asserted, that the amount of human suffering, 
in France itself, inflicted by revolutionary violence in the Reign of 
Terror, was exceeded a hundredfold by the misery of the people 
in the long years preceding the day of retribution. 

Successes of the allies against French troops, and anti-revolution- 
ary risings in the south and west of France, soon demanded the 
attention of the Committee of Public Safety. Mainz (Mayence) 
was retaken, and Valenciennes was captured by the allies. Toulon 
was occupied by the English, aiding the royalist party, and many 
French men-of-war were taken or destroyed. Carnot took energetic 
measures, and a general levy of the male population soon placed 
14 armies in the field. The opponents of the republic at Lyon and 
other towns were crushed with merciless severity. The execution 
of Marie Antoinette, in October, 1793, was followed by more 
republican defeats on the Rhine frontier. Then the tide turned. 
The allies, in December, were forced to retreat, and the capture of 
Toulon by the republican forces was due to the young artillery- 
officer Napoleon Bonaparte. Early in 1794 Robespierre brought 



The French Revolution and Napoleon 543 

to the scaffold his opponents of the extreme party — Hebert, 
Chaumette, and others — and the more moderate members of the 
" Mountain," Danton and Desmoulins. In June the victory of 
Fleurus drove the allies from the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). 
A month more and Robespierre fell, with Couthon and St. Just, 
in the movement of July 27th, or the "9th Thermidor " in the 
revolutionary calendar. The " Reign of Terror " ended with their 
execution, and the establishment of a more moderate rule, with the 
closing of the Jacobin club, was followed early in 1 795 by the suc- 
cess of the French armies in every quarter. The English troops were 
driven out of Holland, and the " Batavian Republic " was founded. 
The formidable royalist revolt in La Vendee, on the west coast, 
between the Loire and the Charente, was quelled after a three-years' 
struggle, and the French republic, crime-stained as it was, became 
an established fact through the valour, energy, and patriotism of a 
people resolved to be masters in their own country. Prussia con- 
cluded the Peace of Basle, in which Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse- 
Cassel joined, ceding the left bank of the Rhine to France. At 
the same time Spain, after warfare on the southern frontier, ceded 
St. Domingo to the republic, and restored all other territories. In 
October, 1795, a revolt of the " Sections," instigated by the royalists 
in Paris, was crushed by Bonaparte on the day styled " 13th Vende- 
miaire " in the new calendar. The system of rule was now changed. 
The National Convention which had existed for over three years was 
superseded by the " Directory," the chief members in the executive 
body of five being Carnot and Barras. Legislative power was vested 
in a chamber of 500 for proposing laws, while a " chamber of 
ancients," or " council of elders," approved or rejected them. 

The war with Austria continued, and important events rapidly 
came. South Germany was invaded by armies under Jourdan and 
Moreau, and Baden, Wiirtemberg, and Bavaria were forced to terms. 
Then a new actor came on the scene in the famous Archduke 
Charles of Austria, brother of the emperor Francis, and destined to 
prove himself one of the ablest generals of the age. In the summer 
of 1796 he defeated and drove back Jourdan, and, turning then on 
Moreau, he forced him to his retreat through the Black Forest, 
memorable for the skill displayed by the consummate commander in 
charge of the French forces. The command in Italy was given by 
the Directory to a still greater general than the archduke or Moreau, 
one of the greatest in all history, the man who, born the son of a 
Corsican lawyer, united " all the brilliance of a Frenchman to all the 
36 



544 A History of the World 

resolute profundity of an Italian, and reared in, yet only half be- 
lieving, the ideas of the Encyclopaedists, was swept up into the seat of 
absolute power by the whirlwind of a revolution." As the leader of a 
fiery and warlike nation, drunk with revolutionary fury, Napoleon, 
seeking to rival Caesar and Charlemagne, was able to found in 
Europe an almost universal empire. A vast literature has gathered 
around the career of the world-famous man who entered Italy in the 
spring of 1796, and for the space of nearly 20 years made his own 
history almost identical with that of Europe. This is no place for 
any analysis of the character of a great bad man, who wrought 
infinite mischief combined with much good, and left the world its 
sternest warning against ambition and fatalism. In the proclamation 
which he issued to the troops on assuming the Italian command, 
Bonaparte gave the keynote of French policy in that age by invoking 
the spirit of self-interest and plunder. The system of war supporting 
itself was introduced, and all needful supplies were taken at the 
bayonet's point from the people of invaded territories. Success in 
the field was often due to this rough method, but in the end 
the hostility which w r as thus aroused against those who behaved like 
mere brigands was fatal to the perpetrators. In one of the most 
brilliant of campaigns, the young general of the Directory routed the 
troops of the Piedmontese and the Austrians, winning the victories 
of Lodi and Castiglione, Areola and Rivoli, and many others of less 
note. Milan was deprived of many works of art, which were sent 
to Paris ; Mantua was captured ; Venice was robbed of Verona and 
other towns. The Pope, and the governments of Naples, Modena, 
and Parma, were frightened into submission, and then, in the spring of 
1797, the conqueror crossed the Alps into the Tyrol, and in several 
actions drove back the Archduke Charles. He was advancing on 
Vienna when the emperor sued for peace, and in October the Treaty 
of Campo Formio ceded the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) to 
France, and gave up Lombardy to form part of a new " Cisalpine 
Republic " in the north of Italy. An iniquitous arrangement made 
an end of the Venetian republic by transfer of her territory, in a large 
part, to Austria, and of the Ionian Islands to France. Sardinia ceded 
Savoy and Nice to the victorious republic, and Bonaparte was 
received at Paris with boundless enthusiasm by the people, and, by 
the corrupt Directory, with greetings which veiled a jealous fear of 
his ambition. 

Bonaparte's next military enterprise took him to Egypt, whither 
he was sent by the Directory in May, 1798, at his own desire, in 



The French Revolution and Napoleon 545 

pursuance of his gigantic plans of Eastern conquest, aimed against 
British predominance in India. The French expedition, on its 
voyage from Toulon, was lucky in escaping the vigilant Nelson, and, 
capturing Malta on the way from the Knights of St. John, arrived 
at Alexandria on June 30th. Then came the famous " Battle of 
the Pyramids " in which the Mamluks were overthrown, and the 
capture of Cairo. On August 1st Nelson's destruction of the 
French fleet at the battle of the Nile (Aboukir Bay) cut the invading 
army off from the chance of return, and Bonaparte, passing into 
Syria, won some victories over the Turkish troops, but had his 
dreams as regards the East dispelled by his failure to capture St. 
Jean d'Acre, after desperate assaults and a siege of 60 days. In 
October, 1799, escaping the British cruisers, he was back in Paris, 
where he found himself called upon to deal with a grave condition 
of affairs at home and abroad. Looking first to Italy, we find that 
in 1798 Rome had been taken by the French, and its palaces, 
churches, and convents stripped of their works of art. Pope 
Pius VI. went as a prisoner to France, where he soon afterwards 
died. Naples was overrun, and the " Roman " and " Parthenopoean 
Republics " were established. Sicily was safe through the presence 
of British ships in the Mediterranean, but the whole mainland of 
Italy was now under French control. A second coalition against 
France was formed, including Russia, now under the emperor 
Paul I., Austria, and Great Britain. An invasion of the Netherlands 
by an army under the duke of York ended in a capitulation of the 
British troops. In Germany and Switzerland the Archduke Charles 
defeated Jourdan and Massena, and most of Italy was recovered for 
a time by Austrian forces and by Russians under Suwarof (Suwarrow), 
whom we have seen victorious over the Turks. The king of Naples 
returned to his dominions, where a terrible vengeance was wreaked 
on the " liberal " (republican) party, and the Parthenopaean (so 
called from the ancient Parthenope, a Greek colony on the site of 
Naples) and Roman Republics came to an end. In France the 
Directory had now fallen into discredit, and Bonaparte, as the 
political ally of Sieyes, one of the body, made an end of that form 
of government on November 9th, 1799 ( tne C0le P d'etat of the " 18th 
Brumaire "), and established the Consulate, nominally of three 
" consuls " as the executive body, but in reality a monarchy, with 
Bonaparte as " First Consul," elected for ten years. In Switzerland 
the military genius of Massena, after some terrible fighting, restored 
matters for France, and Suwarof withdrew to Russia. The new 



546 A History of the World 

administration of France included prefectures for departments, and 
subprefectures for arrondissements (districts, subdivisions of depart- 
ments), and thus arose the still existing centralised system. An 
arbitrary rule, repealing the revolutionary laws and decrees, 
established a censorship of the press and political espionage, and 
so prepared the way for imperial government. When matters 
were arranged at home, Bonaparte again took the field. 

Crossing the St. Bernard pass in May, 1800, the great com- 
mander surprised the Austrians under Melas, and captured Milan, 
and then, after movements involving very brilliant but hazardous 
strategy, encountered the enemy on June 14th, on the plains of 
Marengo, near Alessandria, and fought a battle which, in the moment 
of defeat, was turned into a French victory by the fortunate arrival 
of a detached column led by Desaix, and by a happy cavalry -charge 
under the famous (younger) Kellermann. Massena, meanwhile, had 
been left to endure defeat from superior forces of Austrians, and to 
be starved into surrender at Genoa, after a terrible blockade during 
which 15,000 people died of famine. The battle of Marengo was 
followed by a convention with Melas which surrendered to France 
most of northern Italy. In Germany the French under Moreau 
won some battles against the Austrians and entered Munich in July, 
and on December 3rd, 1800, the same great general defeated the 
Archduke John in the famous battle of Hohenlinden. In February, 
1801, the Peace of Luneville, concluded with Germany, extended 
the French frontier to the left bank of the Rhine ; recognised the 
Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian (Genoa) Republics, 
and rearranged German territory in a shamefully unjust way for 
the benefit of minor German princes. In America, Spain ceded 
Louisiana to France, who sold the territory, in 1803, to the United 
States. 

Turning now to events in Egypt, we find that Kleber, left in 
command by Bonaparte, utterly defeated the Turks, in March, 1800, 
and was murdered at Cairo in June by a Moslem fanatic. In 
March, i8ci, the British expedition under the gallant Sir Ralph 
Abercrombie defeated the French under Kleber's successor Menou, 
at the battle of Aboukir (or Alexandria), in which the British 
commander was mortally wounded. Then his successor, General 
Hutchinson, received the surrender of Alexandria and Cairo, and 
the French forces, evacuating Egypt, were conveyed to their country 
by the British fleet. In July, 1801, after the re -establishment of the 
Church in France, a " Concordat " was made with the Pope (Pius VII., 



Great Britain and Ireland I 789-1 802) 547 

1800-1823), whereby the French prelates were to be appointed 
and supported by the government, and confirmed by the Pope. 
The Papal States, diminished by the loss of Ferrara, Bologna, and 
the Romagna, were well governed by the new Pontiff in the 
encouragement of trade and manufactures, and an economical 
administration of affairs. 

We must now view some events in the British Isles, and our 
share in the naval warfare during this period. George III., a man 
who would have made a good farmer in that age, was a pious 
personage in his private life, but a deplorable failure as a king — 
obstinate, wrong-headed, always more or less insane. He was the 
last British sovereign who took an active and powerful part in 
ruling. Resolved to break down the Whig oligarchy which had so 
long held political sway in both Houses, he " managed " the House 
of Commons through the vast wealth which enabled him to purchase 
votes. His " Civil List," the annual income voted for the royal 
expenses, was about a million sterling, and this was supplemented 
by the royal revenues in Scotland and the revenue of Hanover, 
while further influence was given to the king by the possession of 
great patronage in Church and State — the power of nomination to 
countless posts of emolument, and to sinecures or places on the 
extensive pension-list. He carefully watched the division-lists in 
the Commons, and the use of parliamentary influence in other ways, 
and promotion in the Church, the civil service, and in the army and 
navy was made dependent on support of the ministers whom the 
king approved. Public opinion and the power of the press were 
thus the only restraints upon a system of jobbery and favouritism to 
which some disasters in war were due. The skill and courage of 
British admirals and sailors were the country's main defence against 
commercial ruin, invasion, and subjugation. In domestic affairs, 
the disgraceful Gordon or No-Popery riots of 1780 in London, a 
monstrous outbreak of bigotry and violence, showed the neglect of 
education and religious training among the masses. The repeal, in 
1778, of a severe act against Catholics, long really obsolete, was 
resented by Protestant fanatics, and a half-witted Scot, Lord George 
Gordon, took the lead in rousing the brutal mob of the capital. 
For some days they were the masters of London ; the scenes which 
occurred are well described in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge. In a 
speech on popular education, delivered in the House of Commons 
in April, 1847, the most brilliant of British historians said: "The 
ignorance of the common people makes the property, the limbs, the 



548 A History of the World 

lives of all classes insecure. Without the shadow of a grievance, at 
the summons of a madman, 100,000 people rise in insurrection. 
During a whole week, there is anarchy in the greatest and wealthiest 
of European cities. The parliament is besieged. Your predecessor 
(the Speaker) sits trembling in his chair, and expects every moment 
to see the door beaten in by the ruffians whose roar he hears all 
round the House. The peers are pulled out of their coaches. The 
bishops in their lawn are forced to fly over the tiles. The chapels 
of foreign ambassadors, buildings made sacred by the law of nations, 
are destroyed. The house of the Chief Justice is demolished. The 
little children of the Prime Minister are taken out of their beds and 
laid in their night-clothes on the table of the Horse Guards, the 
only safe asylum from the fury of the rabble. The prisons are 
opened. Highwaymen, housebreakers, murderers, come forth to 
swell the mob by which they have been set free. 36 fires are 
blazing at once in London. Then comes the retribution. Count 
up all the wretches who were shot, who were hanged, who were 
crushed, who drank themselves to death at the rivers of gin which 
ran down Holborn Hill ; and you will find that battles have been 
lost and won with a smaller sacrifice of life. And what was the 
cause of this calamity, a calamity which, in the history of London, 
ranks with the great plague and the great fire ? The cause was the 
ignorance of a population which had been suffered, in the neigh- 
bourhood of palaces, theatres, temples, to grow up as rude and 
stupid as any tribe of tattooed cannibals in New Zealand, as any 
drove of beasts in Smithfield Market." 

William Pitt the younger, prime minister from 1783 to 1801, was 
always a Whig (or Liberal) in his heart and in his policy, until the 
reaction due to the excesses of the French revolutionists drove him 
to repressive measures which caused him to be the idol of Tory 
partisans and timid patriots. He made a vain attempt at parlia- 
mentary reform, defeated by the king's influence, and showed his 
wisdom in finance by reducing duties on tea and spirits, to the 
great discouragement of smuggling in those articles. The Habeas 
Corpus Act was suspended from 1794 to 1801, and under the 
Traitorous Correspondence Act (1793), forbidding intercourse with 
France, an Alien Act, and the Treasonable Practices and Seditious 
Meetings Acts, many persons were severely punished, not only for 
really seditious words and writings, but for opposition to and 
criticism of the king, government, and constitution, and for attendance 
at meetings to discuss grievances. British freedom was lessened 



Great Britain and Ireland (1789— 1802) 549 

when, in 1799, another Act suppressed certain societies for 
parliamentary and administrative reform, and all debating clubs. In 
warlike affairs, brilliant success was won at sea. On the " glorious 
First of June," 1794, Lord Howe completely defeated the French 
fleet off Ushant, with seven ships taken and one sunk, and thereby 
stopped an invasion of our coasts. In 1796 we were confronted by 
combined naval forces of France, Holland, and Spain ; and another 
plan for invasion of the British Isles was formed, with the assemblage 
of squadrons at Brest and Cadiz, and at Texel, an island at the 
entrance to the Zuyder Zee. In February, 1797, the Spanish part 
of the enterprise was disposed of in the battle of St. Vincent (off 
the cape of that name on the south-west coast of Portugal), where 
Sir John Jervis (afterwards Earl St. Vincent), with 15 ships, routed 
a hostile force of 27, capturing several first-rates. Every Briton 
knows or should know that Commodore Nelson, as second-in-com- 
mand, did most of the work on that day, and that Collingwood and 
Trowbridge were also distinguished. In the same year shameful 
ill-treatment of the gallant tars caused dangerous mutinies at Spithead 
and the Nore. In the former instance the mutineers were appeased 
by the just and popular Lord Howe ; at the Nore, concessions were 
made to proper demands, and vigorous measures of attack caused 
the surrender of the ringleaders. In October, 1797, the projected 
Dutch invasion of Ireland, in conjunction with a French fleet, was 
ruined by the noble Admiral Duncan, first earl of Camperdown, off 
the place of that name on the Dutch coast. 1 1 ships were captured, 
and two years later, in 1799, Admiral Mitchell forced the surrender, 
off Texel, of 12 Dutch men-of-war and 13 " Indiamen." In northern 
Europe, a combination against Great Britain, first formed in 1780, 
was revived by Russia, Sweden, Prussia, and Denmark, under the 
name of the " Northern Convention," or " Armed Neutrality." This 
arrangement denied to us the right of search on neutral ships which 
might be carrying munitions of war to our foes. In those days it 
was not the custom of British ministers, with all their faults, to 
argue with insolent aggression, but to strike promptly and to strike 
hard. Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson, as second-in-command, on 
this occasion doing all the work, was sent to Copenhagen in April, 
1 80 1, with a fleet, and after a desperate action with the Danish 
ships and forts he compelled Denmark's withdrawal from the con- 
federation, already on the way to dissolution from the murder, in 
March, of the emperor Paul I. of Russia, who was succeeded by 
his son, Alexander I. 



550 A History of the World 

Some important matters occurred in the development of British 
freedom. The House of Commons, which did not really represent 
the people, in being largely controlled by the Crown and by great 
landowners, showed itself hostile to electoral rights in the case of 
John Wilkes, who had become notorious as the assailant of the 
government in his newspaper the North Briton. In 1763 he was 
arrested, along with nearly 50 other persons — alleged authors, 
printers, and publishers of the " libel " — under a " general warrant," 
meaning one in which no name is mentioned, authorising the officers 
of the law to arrest any suspected persons. Wilkes, the avowed 
author of the article, was at once released, under writ of Habeas 
Corpus, by Chief-Justice Pratt, afterwards the first Lord Camden, >on 
pleading his privilege as M.P. ; but the important part of the matter 
was that the Chief-Justice declared "general warrants" to be illegal 
documents, and Wilkes and others recovered substantial damages 
for unlawful arrest. In 1769 he was thrice elected for Middlesex 
and thrice rejected by the Commons, the seat being given to an 
opponent who had but a small minority of votes. After a long 
contest, Wilkes, again elected for Middlesex in 1774, took his seat, 
and in 1782 he carried a motion which caused the resolutions of the 
Commons, rejecting him from membership, to be expunged from 
the journals "as subversive of the rights of electors." The news- 
paper press was also at issue with the- Commons on the question 
of the publication of debates. In 1771, after the imprisonment of 
certain printers for publishing reports of proceedings in the House, 
the Commons tacitly yielded the point at issue, and became hence- 
forth more responsible to public opinion through the establishment 
of " free reporting." The public press, besides, being hampered, 
so far as newspapers were concerned, by the oppressive stamp-duty, 
under George III., of fourpence on every full-sized sheet, was 
controlled by the very severe laws of libel. In 1764 Lord 
Mansfield, Chief-Justice, decided that the judge alone could deal 
with the matter of a libel, or determine whether the published words 
were criminal or not, and that the jury had only to decide on the 
fact of publication. Newspapers and other publications criticising 
the government were thus at the mercy of judges, but in 1791 the 
illustrious Whig orator Charles James Fox caused the passing of the 
Libel Act which rendered juries, in criminal trials for libel, judges 
of the libel itself, as well as of the fact of publication. 

In Ireland, in the reign of George III., important events took 
place. The penal laws against Catholics had, as time went on, been 



Great Britain and Ireland (i 789-1 802) 551 

much modified in action, but there were still abundant grievances for 
Irish patriots. An opportunity came in 1779, when many thousands 
of volunteers, raised to encounter possible French invasion, backed 
the parliamentary leaders Henry Grattan and Henry Hood. The 
repeal of Poynings' Acts was followed by legislation which allowed 
Catholics to hold land, erect schools, and enjoy other common rights 
of British subjects, and in 1782 the country had an independent 
Parliament, a body which existed for 18 years. The Irish House 
of Commons, wholly Protestant, was a very corrupt assembly, 
returned chiefly through the influence, in small boroughs, of the 
government and of a few great nobles. In 1780 and 1782 Protestant 
dissenters in Ireland obtained political freedom, and the great 
majority of the people in Ulster, who were Presbyterians in religious 
belief, were thus enabled to hold civil, military, and municipal posts. 
Some degree of freedom had been given to trade, but the efforts 
of the enlightened Pitt in that direction were frustrated by the 
jealousy of English merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, and 
cattle-breeders. The country soon fell into confusion. The 
Catholics, excluded from Parliament, banded themselves together 
against the payment of rent to the landlords and tithes to the 
Protestant clergy. Catholic " Defenders " in the north fought with 
Protestant " Peep-o'-Day Boys." Then the " Orange " lodges, 
composed of extreme Protestants, were formed, and a new source 
of anarchy thus arose. The French Revolution, at its outbreak, 
brought together both Protestants and Catholics, under Rowan and 
Wolfe Tone, in the body called the " Society of United Irishmen," 
founded at Belfast in 1790. The Parliament was thus forced, in 
1792-93, to remove many existing Catholic grievances. Catholics 
were admitted at last to the parliamentary franchise and to the 
legal profession. They were free to dispose of property by sale or 
by will, to marry Protestants, to educate their children, to worship 
in their own way, and to hold the lower civil and military offices. 
The " United Irishmen," under Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, at last adopted republican ideas, and, aiming at independ- 
ence of Great Britain, appealed to France for aid. An expedition, 
in 1796, under the famous Hoche, was dispersed by a storm, and 
other attempts at invasion were baffled by British squadrons. 
Matters came to a head through cruel measures of repression, and 
in 1798 a rebellion took place. Enniscorthy and Wexford were 
taken by the rebels, and some cruelties were perpetrated on 
Protestants, but on June 21st the main force was broken up in the 



552 A History of the World 

battle of Vinegar Hill by General Lake, and then the most brutal 
severity was employed by the agents of the British government. 
Pitt saw the only remedy for the miserable condition of affairs in 
a legislative union, and by a free use of intimidation, coercion, 
bribery, and corruption he managed, in June 1800, to pass the 
Bill through the Irish Parliament. The Act of Union, coming into 
force on January 1st, 1801, gave Ireland 100 members in the 
Imperial Parliament (Commons) at Westminster, and placed for 
that country, in the Lords, four bishops of the Protestant Church, 
sitting by rotation, and 28 temporal peers, chosen for life 
by the general body of Irish nobles. Free trade between Great 
Britain and Ireland began, and the Union flag added the cross of 
St. Patrick to the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George, united in 
1707. The stupid bigotry and prejudice of the half-mad king, 
who protested that to admit Catholics to Parliament would be 
a violation of his coronation-oath, compelled Pitt to break the 
promises which, in conjunction with the Whig leaders, he had 
wished to fulfil, in the Union Act, as the price paid to the Irish 
Catholics for their assent to the legislative union. Pitt then 
retired from office, for a time, in disgust. 

In March, 1802, the war ended for a brief space with the Peace 
of Amiens. We need not discuss the terms of what was a mere 
truce, and only note that Trinidad was ceded to Great Britain by 
Spain, and Ceylon by the " Batavian Republic" (Holland). The 
position of Napoleon, as we shall henceforth style " Bonaparte," in 
France was much strengthened by the conclusion of peace after 
brilliant successes in war. It was at this time that he did the best 
work of his life, in creating institutions and executing works which 
have survived all changes in the country for whose benefit they 
were devised. The judicial system and local government were 
placed on a firm basis. The Bank of France arose. The Uni- 
versity was reorganised as an incorporated body of teachers who 
had passed a state-examination, and the whole system of higher 
education came under the control of the government. The " Institut 
National" was rearranged into four " academies "—the Academie 
Frangaise, Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Academie des 
Sciences, and Academie des Beaux-Arts, originally founded under 
Louis XIV., or, in the case of the Academie Branfaise, under 
his predecessor. A new order of chivalry, the Legion of Honour, 
since much degraded by indiscriminate admissions to its ranks, 
was founded. Much was done for the promotion of agriculture, 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 553 

manufactures, and commerce. A general amnesty allowed the 
royalist emigres to return to France. A court and a brilliant society 
again existed in Paris, and a monarch arose when a popular vote 
{plebiscite) of 3,500,000, in August, 1802, confirmed Napoleon 
as Consul for life, with the right of appointing a successor. The 
chief jurists of the nation, under the great man's own supervision, 
took in hand the Code Napoleon, the most famous of the modern 
codes of law, a splendid simplification published between 1804 and 
1810, a great boon to France, which became, wholly or in part, the 
model for many Continental systems of law, as in Italy, Belgium, 
Greece, and Rhenish Germany. The Louvre Gallery in Paris was 
formed with the works of art stolen from Italy, and superficial 
observers thought that France was started anew on a peaceful and 
prosperous career. They knew not the vast ambition and the 
unscrupulous arrogance of the new ruler. He was eager for wider 
sway, and — fatal mistake of his career — -he could not rest until he 
had humbled Great Britain, the power he should have sought, 
above all others, to conciliate and to render neutral. 

Chapter II. — The Napoleonic War (1803-1815). 

The renewal of the struggle was mainly due to Napoleon's aggressive 
action in northern Italy, Switzerland, and Holland ; to the retention, 
by Great Britain, of the island of Malta, taken by our forces in 1800, 
in conjunction with the people, who had risen against their French 
masters ; to the French ruler's monstrous demand for the suppression 
of every publication in the British Isles which criticised his proceed- 
ings, and for the expulsion of all French refugees ; and to his 
grossly insulting conduct, in presence of the diplomatic body at 
the Tuileries, towards the British ambassador, Lord Whitworth. 
As regards Italy, in 1802, Napoleon seized Elba, annexed Piedmont 
and the duchy of Parma, and made himself head of the " Italian " 
(formerly " Cisalpine ") Republic. He retained military possession 
of Holland, and made an armed " mediation " in Swiss affairs. 
Malta, according to the Amiens treaty, should have been restored 
to the Knights of St. John, but the British government declined to 
do this, because, in Napoleon's hostile attitude, they deemed the 
possession of the island needful for British interests in the Mediter- 
ranean, and the Maltese people expressed their preference for our 
rule over that of the Knights. On the fresh outbreak of war in 
May, 1803, the law of nations was violated in the seizure, and 



554 A History of the World 

detention for 1 1 years, of British residents and travellers, to the 
number of about 10,000, in France and Holland. Hanover was 
occupied by French troops, and almost ruined by exactions. A 
vast force was gathered at Boulogne for the invasion of England, 
and our shores were thus threatened with a descent until the 
summer of 1805. National enthusiasm was strongly aroused in 
both countries, and the danger to England was very great. In 
May, 1S04, Napoleon, after driving his rival Moreau to exile 
in America on a charge of conspiracy, and the deliberate murder, 
by shooting at Vincennes, of the due d'Enghien — a Bourbon prince 
of the Conde line, lawlessly seized on Baden territory — became 
" Emperor of the French," with hereditary succession in the male 
line, either in children of his own, or by adoption of children of his 
brothers, or by succession of his brothers Joseph and Louis 
Bonaparte. Pius VII. came to Paris for the coronation, but he 
was treated with scant respect, as the emperor crowned himself 
and Josephine with his own hands. A brilliant imperial court 
was established, with an array of grand dignitaries and a new 
nobility, while 14 marshals, including Davout and Lannes, Massena 
and Soult, Ney and Murat, Jourdan and Kellermann, were created 
for the chief commands in the imperial armies. In May, 1805, 
Napoleon was crowned " King of Italy," in the cathedral at Milan ; 
Josephine's son, Eugene Beauharnais, became viceroy of Naples ; 
and the " Ligurian Republic " (Genoa) was annexed to France. 

In May, 1804, William Pitt came again to the head of affairs in 
Great Britain, and, when Spain joined France in hostilities, the 
British minister formed the "Third Coalition," including Russia, 
Austria, and Sweden. It was in the summer of 1805 that the 
danger of invasion of our shores reached its height. A fleet of 
about 600 gun-vessels and other small worships was gathered at 
Boulogne, with more than 500 transports, protected by countless 
batteries ashore. At Calais, Dunkirk, Ambleteuse, and Ostend 
there were above 1,300 armed and about 1,000 unarmed craft, and 
these, with the Boulogne flotilla, were capable of carrying 150,000 
men and 9,000 horses. Six army-corps were organised, under 
leaders including Ney, Soult, Davout, Murat, and Lannes, and the 
one thing needed was to obtain for a few hours the command of 
the narrow part of the Channel. Constant practice had trained 
100,000 men to embark on the vessels in 40 minutes, and 70 sail 
of the line, French and Spanish, were at Napoleon's command. 
Nelson, blockading Villeneuve's fleet, at Toulon, in March, 1805, 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 55 5 

was driven off by bad weather, and then the French admiral got 
out of harbour and sailed for the West Indies, drawing Nelson 
away in pursuit, but at 30 days' sail in the rear. Villeneuve then 
doubled back to Europe, to pick up the Spanish fleet and start for 
the Channel. On July 22nd Sir Robert Calder, apprised by Nelson, 
who sent on a swift-sailing frigate, of Villeneuve's return-voyage, 
attacked that admiral near Cape Finisterre, and captured two ships in 
an action made indecisive by foggy weather and light winds. It was 
this seemingly slight incident that spoiled all Napoleon's plans. 
There was a powerful Spanish squadron at Ferrol ; there were 
French fleets at Rochefort and Brest : they all awaited the leadership 
of Villeneuve; but that irresolute and nerveless commander, in 
dread of Nelson, disobeyed Napoleon's positive orders to sail for 
Brest, unite the fleet there with his own, and then hasten to 
Boulogne. The road was really open, as Nelson, in ignorance of 
Villeneuve's position, was cruising off Cape St. Vincent, and Calder 
had sailed with his two prizes for Plymouth. Villeneuve, however, 
went off to Cadiz, and reached that port on the very day that 
Napoleon expected him to be at Brest. The signal-posts 
(semaphores) were all ready, and staff-officers were placed along the 
coast for many leagues from Boulogne to the west"; but Napoleon 
looked in vain for his admiral, blockaded now in Cadiz by Colling- 
wood. Thus was Britain saved. The arrival of Nelson in the 
Channel made the enterprise hopeless, and Napoleon turned the 
splendid force at Boulogne to account in his finest campaign. In 
September, 1805, he marched for Austria, forced General Mack 
to surrender at Ulm with 30,000 men, entered Vienna as a 
conqueror, and on December 2nd, in the magnificent battle of 
Austerlitz, totally defeated the combined Russian and Austrian 
forces, in presence of the two emperors. The coalition was broken 
up. Pitt, already in weak health, received his death-blow, and 
ended his life early in 1806. Austria at once sued for peace, which 
was obtained by her surrender to France of all the Venetian territory 
ceded to her by the Treaty of Campo Formio, with Istria and 
Dalmatia ; by her recognition of Napoleon as " King of Italy " ; by 
the cession to Bavaria of Tyrol and other territory ; and by the 
granting of all remaining western Austrian lands to Wiirtemberg 
and Baden. The " Holy Roman Empire " now came formally to 
an end, and Francis assumed the title of " Emperor of Austria." 
Bavaria and Wiirtemberg became "kingdoms," and in July, 1806, 
the old empire was replaced by the " Confederation of the Rhine," 



$ 56 A History of the World 

with Napoleon as " Protector." Louis Bonaparte, the conqueror's 
third brother, was created king of Holland, and his elder brother, 
Joseph, king of Naples. It is needless to inform British readers 
that the control of the seas, for the rest of the war, had been 
secured for Great Britain, on October 21st, 1805, by Nelson's 
crowning victory of Trafalgar. 

In the autumn of 1806 Prussia, now under the rule of the well- 
meaning but weak Frederick William III. (1 797-1840), grand-nephew 
of Frederick the Great, in indignation at Napoleon's dealings with 
Germany, declared war against Napoleon, in alliance with Russia 
and Saxony. The struggle, as regarded Prussia, was very short and 
quite decisive. The Prussian military system was now cumbrous 
and antiquated, and the commanders were ill-fitted to cope with 
their adversaries. The great defeats of Jena and Auerstadt, on 
.October 14th, laid the monarchy in the dust. Berlin was occupied ; 
all the fortresses were soon passively surrendered or taken. The 
lasting hatred of the people was earned by the victor's unmanly 
treatment of their beautiful, graceful, gentle, benevolent, and patriotic 
queen Louisa, whose energy and resolution of character were dis- 
played in the darkest hour of her country's fortunes. The museums 
and picture-galleries were robbed of their choicest treasures. 
Napoleon then received the submission of Saxony, the elector 
entering the Rhine Confederacy as " king," and marched eastwards 
to meet the Russians. On February 7th and 8th, 1807, the in- 
decisive battle of Eylau was fought, with fearful bloodshed, amidst 
ice and snow, about 23 miles south of Konigsberg. In this great 
contest a Prussian corps repulsed the French right wing under 
Davout, but the allies, on the second night, left the field to the foe 
and retired on Konigsberg. In May, Danzig was taken after a brave 
defence, and in June the war ended with Napoleon's great victory 
over Alexander I. of Russia at Friedland, about 26 miles south- 
east of Konigsberg. The Peace of Tilsit, concluded in July, created 
a new " duchy of Warsaw " out of Prussian territory ; recognised 
Napoleon's new kingdoms in Italy, Holland, and Germany, and his 
Rhine Confederacy ; made a secret alliance of Russia with France 
against Great Britain, if the latter power continued the war ; ceded 
to Napoleon all Prussian territory between the Rhine and the Elbe ; 
closed all Russian and Prussian ports to British ships and British 
trade during war between Great Britain and France ; and, most 
humiliating of all for Prussia, restricted the number of her standing 
army to 42,000 men, and exacted a war-indemnity of 140,000,000 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 557 

francs (over ,£5,500,000 sterling), with occupation of the fortresses 
and remaining territory by 150,000 troops, at the charges of Prussia, 
until all arrears were paid. Prussia was thus deprived of 43,000 
square miles of territory, or nearly half the whole, and of 5,000,000 
inhabitants. Some of the territory ceded between the Elbe and 
the Rhine, together with Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, and a part of 
Hanover, became the new kingdom of Westphalia, under Napoleon's 
youngest brother, Jerome Bonaparte. 

It was at this time that the French conqueror started his famous 
" Continental System," intended to ruin the British commerce. In 
the " Berlin Decree" of November, 1806, he declared the British 
Isles to be in a state of blockade, and forbade all intercourse and 
correspondence with them. No trade in English goods was per- 
mitted, and no ship coming direct from Britain or a British colony 
could enter any port. This challenge was soon taken up by the 
British government. In January, 1807, an "Order in Council" 
prohibited neutral vessels from entering any port belonging to France 
or her allies, or under French control, and every neutral vessel 
violating this order was made liable to confiscation with all its cargo. 
Another Order in Council, issued in November, 1807, placed under 
blockade all Continental and colonial ports of France and her allies, 
as well as those of every country which was at war with Great Britain 
and from which the British flag was excluded. Napoleon retorted 
with decrees issued from Milan in December, 1807, and from the 
Tuileries in January, 1808, treating as British, i.e. as hostile, and 
liable to capture and confiscation, any vessel, of any nation, that 
had been searched by a British ship, or had ever made a voyage to 
the British Isles, or had paid any duty to the British government. 
Most of the European countries were forced by France to join the 
" Continental System." The effects of this commercial internecine 
warfare were remarkable. The main purpose of Napoleon's decrees 
was frustrated by a vast smuggling-organisation which no vigilance 
could deal with, and the trade of Great Britain was benefited by an 
arrangement which, as her fleets and cruisers swept the seas, made it 
impossible to obtain colonial produce except through her. On the 
other hand, the high price of colonial sugar set the wits of Conti- 
nental chemists and manufacturers to work, and thus arose the now 
vast production of saccharine matter from beetroot. The really 
important effects of this commercial contest lay in a different 
direction. The Continental nations suffering from Napoleon's 
oppressive measures, devised in his deadly hatred of Great Britain. 



558 A History of the World 

were aroused against him. His attack on Portugal, for refusal to 
submit to his " Decrees," brought into the arena of land-warfare 
Portugal's faithful ally, Great Britain, with results disastrous, in the 
end, to French military power. The war with Russia in 181 2 was 
mainly due to her refusal to adhere any longer to the " Continental 
System." On the other hand, the British policy, in reply to 
Napoleon's, with regard to neutral commerce, was chiefly responsible 
for our lamentable war with the United States in 1812-1815. An 
immediate result of the Treaty of Tilsit, the secret articles of which 
became known, by some means which he would never reveal, to Pitt's 
ablest pupil and follower, George Canning, Foreign Secretary in the 
Portland ministry, was the high-handed British attack on Denmark. 
Napoleon had conceived the idea of again contesting British 
supremacy in naval warfare, and, with this object, he thought of 
using the fleets of the northern nations, Sweden and Denmark. 
Canning anticipated this by the dispatch of an overwhelming force 
to Copenhagen in August, 1807. The surrender of the Danish fleet 
into British possession was refused, and only enforced after a 
fearful bombardment both by sea and land, in which the terrible 
rockets invented by and named from Sir William Congreve were 
for the first time used in war on a large scale. On September 8th 
the Danish fleet and arsenal-stores were given into our keeping, 
and the island of Heligoland, opposite the mouth of the Elbe, was 
taken from Denmark, to be used as a place of storage for British 
goods to be smuggled on to the Continent. 

We must now deal briefly with the remaining events of Napoleon's 
wondrous, eventful career. The great struggle known as the Penin- 
sular War was due to his wanton attack on Portugal for her refusal 
to join the " Continental System," and to his invasion of Spain, 
followed by the enticing of King Charles IV. and his son Ferdinand 
to Bayonne, where they were compelled to renounce the throne. 
There can be little doubt that Napoleon's desire to possess himself 
of the Peninsula was due to a plan for employing the territory as a 
new base of operations against British maritime, naval, and colonial 
power. In Portugal the mental incapacity of Queen Maria had 
caused, in 1799, the regency of her eldest son John. When the 
French marshal Junot entered the country, the royal family took 
ship for Brazil in November, 1807, making the capital, Rio de 
Janeiro, the seat of government, and leaving affairs at home in the 
hands of a. Junta-, or administrative body. Napoleon, in his arrogant 
way, then declared that " the House of Braganza had ceased to 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 559 

reign." There was, however, a certain "general of sepoys," named 
Sir Arthur Wellesley, in reserve to deal with that question. In 
Spain the people rushed to arms when Napoleon's brother Joseph 
entered Madrid as the new king, his throne at Naples being given 
to the brilliant cavalry-commander, Marshal Murat. In the field 
the ill-trained, ill-provided, ill-commanded Spanish armies could 
do little against the French, but the people distinguished themselves 
by two heroic defences of Saragossa, and the peasantry, with irregular 
troops, did much harm to the enemy in relentless and skilled guerilla- 
warfare. The details of the struggle are well known from British 
history, and we here give only a rapid summary. 

On August 1st, 1808, a British army, under Sir Arthur Wellesley, 
landed at Mondego Bay, on the west coast of Portugal. In a few 
weeks that general's victories at Rolica and Vimeira compelled the 
French forces to evacuate the country under the Convention of 
Cintra. Another expedition, under Sir John Moore, then landed 
in Portugal, and advanced to Salamanca, in the north-west of Spain. 
A retreat was forced by the arrival of Napoleon in person with 
overwhelming numbers, and this brief campaign ended, in January, 
1809, with Moore's victory, at Coruiia, over Soult, his mortal wound, 
and the safe embarkation of the troops. In April, Sir Arthur 
Wellesley landed at Lisbon, after a brief supersession in his command 
by two incapables. In May his brilliant and daring passage of the 
Douro drove. Soult headlong out of Oporto into Spain. A two-days' 
battle at Talavera, in July, completely re-established the credit of 
British infantry in a victory gained by 19,000 young soldiers, little 
aided by Spaniards, over 30,000 excellent French troops. Wellesley 
became Viscount Wellington. In September, 1810, Wellington, 
retiring before greatly superior French forces under Massena and 
Ney, faced round and repulsed them on the ridge at Busaco, near 
Coimbra. He then withdrew and wintered in safety, never once 
attacked, within the admirable and impregnable lines of Torres 
Vedras, of his own design. Massena retreated into Spain, after 
incurring great losses of men from privation and disease. 

In 181 1 Wellington, following Massena, fought with him in 

May the drawn battle of Fuentes d'Onoro, in the west of Spain, 

and his great adversary was then recalled by Napoleon, who had 

ordered him to " drive the English into the sea," and was replaced 

by Marmont. In the same month Marshal Beresford, an Irish 

general in the Portuguese service, with a British and Spanish army, 

defeated Soult in the desperate battle of Albuera, near Badajoz. 
37 



560 A History of the World 

Wellington was obliged, by superior forces, to retreat to Portugal, 
after two repujses in attempts to storm Badajoz. In January, 181 2, 
the British commander fell suddenly on Ciudad Rodrigo, a strong 
fortress in the west of Spain, and took it by storm, and in 
April he assaulted and captured Badajoz, another frontier strong- 
hold, thus securing the Portuguese border and having a base of 
operations against the French in Spain. On July 22nd the great 
British commander fought and won the decisive battle of Salamanca 
against Marmont, and in August entered Madrid in triumph. This 
grand success was a turning-point, not only in the Peninsular 
War, but in the general European contest against Napoleon. The 
sound of the cannon of Salamanca, when the news was known, 
reverberated through Europe from the Tagus to the Niemen. 
The nations awoke to thoughts of near emancipation from a master's 
sway. Prussia, long planning vengeance for the past, felt that the 
day of her deliverance had dawned, and took fresh heart and 
hope. Russia resolved to make no terms of any kind with her 
advancing foe. Napoleon, now fully on the march to Moscow, 
heard of the defeat with bitter wrath against the hapless Marmont, 
and took it as an evil omen for events to come. The victor, 
already an earl for Badajoz, became a marquis, and, by a brief 
outburst of gratitude from the execrable Spanish government to- 
wards the man who delivered their country from the French, he 
was made general-in-chief of the Spanish armies, a Knight of the 
Golden Fleece (a dignity most rarely bestowed on foreigners), and 
duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. After a failure to capture Burgos, 
Wellington was again compelled, for the last time in his glorious 
career, to retreat before superior forces, beyond Ciudad Rodrigo, 
into Portugal. 

In 18 1 3, with the salute of " Good-bye, Portugal! " as he crossed 
the frontier, the British general entered Spain at the head of 
ioo,coo men, and, marching by Valladolid, drove the French before 
him in a campaign conducted with consummate skill. The enemy 
were brought to bay, under King Joseph and Marshal Jourdan, 
on June 21st, at Vittoria, where Wellington won a complete victory, 
capturing all the French guns and baggage, with the army-chest, 
and driving the enemy off in rout towards the Pyrenees. On 
August 31st San Sebastian was stormed by Sir Thomas Graham, 
afterwards Lord Lynedoch. Then, in the famous " Battles of the 
Pyrenees," Wellington forced Soult back into France, and, winning 
on French soil the battles of the Nivelle, Nive, St. Pierre, 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 561 

Orthez, and Toulouse, entered Bordeaux as a conqueror in April, 
1814. 

We must now follow Napoleon's fortunes during the years of 
the struggle against his forces in the Peninsula. In 1809 the Fifth 
Coalition against France was formed by Great Britain and Austria, 
with Portugal and Spain. Austrian forces, under the Archduke 
Charles, entered Bavaria, and the French emperor, hurrying to the 
scene of action, defeated him in several encounters, including the 
battle of Eckmuhl, in April ; drove him across the Danube into 
Bohemia, and captured Vienna for the second time. In May the 
archduke, with a fresh army, defeated Napoleon, on the left bank 
of the Danube, nearly opposite Vienna, in the hard-fought battles of 
Aspern and Essling, and forced him to the island of Lobau. Early 
in July the emperor, strongly reinforced by Eugene Beauharnais, 
who had driven the Archduke John of Austria out of Italy, crossed 
the Danube again between Lobau and the left bank, and won the 
great battle of Wagram over the Archduke Charles, driving his army 
into Moravia. In October, the Peace of Vienna, or Schonbrunn, 
between Austria and France, ceded much territory near the Adriatic 
to Napoleon ; gave up lands to Bavaria ; yielded West Gallicia to 
the duchy of Warsaw (a kind of new Poland, under the king of 
Saxony), a proceeding which gave deep offence to the tsar ; and 
made Austria break off all connection with Great Britain, and adopt 
the " Continental System." Austria was thus deprived of 32,000 
square miles of territory, containing 3.500,000 of people, and was fur- 
ther mulcted in a large war-indemnity. This success of Napoleon's 
was followed by his divorce of Jose'phine, and his marriage in 
April, 18 10, to the emperor of Austria's daughter, Maria Louisa. 
A son was born in tSii, who received the title of " King of Rome," 
but he never reigned, and, under his Austrian title of duke of 
Reichstadt, he died in 1832. In connection with this Franco- 
Austrian war we must notice the brave struggle, against Bavarian 
and French forces, carried on in the Tyrol by the loyal peasants 
under the command of Speckbacher, Straub, and Andreas Hofer. 
The enemy, beaten in many actions among the mountains, were 
driven from the country. After Wagram, Marshal Lefebvre captured 
Innsbruck, the capital, but the Tyrolese again freed the territory, 
and Hofer was for some time at the head of the government. The 
Peace of Schonbrunn yielded the Tyrol again to Bavaria, and the 
Austrian government induced the Tyrolese to lay down their arms. 
Hofer resumed the contest, but could get little support, and was 



562 A History of the World 

finally betrayed to the French, who tried him by court-martial, and, 
with base cruelty, shot him, as a "traitor," at Mantua, in February, 
1810. 

Napoleon was at the height of his power in 18 10 and 181 1. 
In 1809 Tuscany and the Papal States had been annexed. Holland, 
Westphalia, and the old Hanseatic towns Bremen, Liibeck, and 
Hamburg, were added to the empire, in order to give the emperor 
command of the seaboard, and enable him to render more strict 
the enforcement of the "Continental System," under which he now 
prohibited British trade even by neutral vessels. The French 
empire now extended from Denmark to Naples, and eastwards to 
the Trave, by Liibeck, comprising 130 "departments," and having 
a total population exceeding 40,000,000. The capitals of this great 
dominion were Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. The fatal war with 
Russia arose from Alexander's irritation at the Franco-Austrian 
alliance, and at Napoleon's dealings with Polish territory, and, 
especially, through the French emperor's dictatorial tone with 
reference to his favourite commercial policy, which was becoming 
ruinous to Russia. We need not dwell on the events which ended 
in the ruin of the greatest military armament of modern days — the 
crossing of the Niemen, the storming of Smolensk, the fearful battle 
of Borodino, the occupation of Moscow, the burning of that ancient 
capital, the horrors of the retreat, the passage of the Berezina, the 
recrossing of the Niemen on December 20th, 1812, with a few 
thousands out of more than 400,000 combatants. The immediate 
results of this gigantic failure were the formation of the Sixth Coalition 
against Napoleon, ultimately including Russia, Prussia, Austria, 
Great Britain, Sweden, and some minor German states, and the 
outbreak, in 1813, of the great "War of Liberation" in central 
Europe. 

The revival of Prussia after the misfortunes of 1806 needs a 
special notice in this narrative, for never did a sovereign and a nation 
more nobly turn to use the lessons of adversity. The king, 
Frederick William III., was stirred, after his recovery from the first 
shock of his great fall, to an admirable energy, perseverance, and 
self-denial, and the complete reorganisation of affairs was taken in 
hand. In this work he received invaluable aid from his minister 
Baron von Stein and from David von Scharnhorst, the military 
reformer. Hereditary serfdom was abolished; the sale and purchase 
of land were freed from feudal restrictions ; the privileges of caste 
came to an end ; a class of peasant-proprietors arose on the crown- 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) 563 

lands. Monopolies and other obstacles to freedom of trade were 
swept away. A complete financial reform was made. Seeking to 
lay a basis of political freedom and responsibility in the middle 
class, Stein inaugurated a new municipal system which freed citizens 
from military officialism, and, in a word, he founded the subsequent 
greatness of his country. After his retirement in November, 1808, 
a measure enforced by the jealousy of Napoleon, the work was 
carried on by the minister Hardenberg. The military changes 
were due to the highly scientific and practical General Scharnhorst, 
the son of a Hanoverian peasant. His system of short-service 
enabled him to evade Napoleon's restriction of numbers in the 
ranks of the standing-army by passing through discipline continual 
fresh drafts of men. Thus, in a few years' time, a large part of the 
male population was trained for war, and a new army of citizen- 
soldiers was created in the Landwehr (land-defence), or first reserve, 
and the Landsturm, or men to be called out only in the case of invasion. 
At the same time, under the direction of Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
the excellent modern system of Prussian education was established, 
and the University of Berlin was founded. All classes joined in 
the resolve to free the country from the French yoke. The poet 
Arndt stirred patriotic hearts by fiery song. The philosopher Fichte, 
in his enthusiastic " Addresses to the Germans," full of impassioned 
eloquence, summoned his countrymen to the high duty of founding 
an empire of reason in which intellect alone should guide human 
affairs, and pointed out the true means of national regeneration in a 
system of public instruction. Men of all ranks, especially students 
and professors, joined in forming the " Tugendbund," or " League 
of Virtue," devoted ostensibly to educational reform, but secretly 
cherishing the plan of freedom from foreign domination over the 
Fatherland. Such was the Prussia to which her king appealed in 
February, 1 813, calling upon her youthful men to arm in her 
defence. An alliance was made with the tsar, who some years 
before had met the Prussian monarch at midnight by the tomb of 
the great Frederick, where they swore to be true to each other in 
any future contest for the deliverance of Germany and Europe. 
The Prussian people at once rushed to arms, and Alexander brought 
his hosts into the field. 

The new struggle against Napoleon lasted for over twelve months. 
He had, with wonderful energy, raised fresh forces, and had at first 
the best of the contest. In May the allies were defeated by him at 
Liitzen and Bautzen, in Saxony, where he met a combined force 



564 A History of the World 

of Russians and Prussians. After an armistice, during which 
Napoleon's pride made him refuse reasonable concessions to 
Austria, that power joined his foes, and the war reopened in 
August with the French marshal Macdonald's utter defeat by 
Bliicher, the brave Prussian general, at the Katzbach river, in 
Silesia, and the French emperor's great victory over the Austrians 
at Dresden. Then, after much marching and counter-marching and 
some disasters to French commanders, the campaign in Germany 
ended in October with ihe great twc-days' battle at Leipzig, fought 
by over half a million of men, above three-fifths of whom were those 
of the allies. Entire defeat in this mighty struggle forced Napoleon 
beyond the Rhine, and he was then engaged in defending the roads 
to Paris against overwhelming Austrian, Prussian, and Russian 
forces. Again and again, during this period, Napoleon, in the very 
insanity of arrogant trust in his "star," or in the belief that con- 
cession would be fatal to his interests in France, rejected terms 
which would have left him ruler of a greater France than that of 
the Bourbon kings. He never displayed more brilliant strategy or 
swifter movement than in February and March, 18 14, winning battle 
after battle against isolated bodies, but he could not afford the losses 
sustained, and Paris was forced to surrender on March 31st. On 
April nth he abdicated, and retired, with the title of emperor, to 
Elba, while the Bourbon line was restored in the person of the 
Comte de Provence, next younger brother of Louis XVI. He 
reigned as Louis XVIII. , Louis XVII. being represented by the 
hapless young "dauphin," who had died, aged ten years, in 1795, a 
prisoner at the Temple in Paris, after cruel treatment at the hands 
of the revolutionary gaolers. 

The immediate results of the first downfall of the French empire 
were the return of Pius VII. to Rome ; of the king of Sardinia, 
Victor Emmanuel, to Turin; and of Ferdinand VII. to Spain. 
The sudden return of Napoleon from Elba in March, 18 15, while 
the Congress of Vienna was sitting, was due to the information 
which he had received concerning the unpopularity of the restored 
Bourbons. The position of public men and the titles to estates 
were unsettled. The army was full of discontent on seeing high 
commands awarded to returned nobles — the emigres — who had been 
fighting in the ranks of the allies against their country. Large 
numbers of Napoleon's soldiers had been restored to France by 
the release of prisoners of war, and in the persons of the troops 
who had been garrisons of German fortresses in the north. All 



The Napoleonic War (1803-18 15) * $6$ 

the elements of new trouble thus existed, and the landing of the 
dethroned monarch at Frejus, south-west of Cannes, on March 1st, 
1815, was followed by his triumphant arrival in the capital on 
March 20th. We need not dwell on the events which closed the 
historical period known as "The Hundred Days." The Waterloo 
campaign may be read in Creasy 's fascinating pages. The shortest 
and most decisive campaign on record began on June 15th with 
Napoleon's occupation of Charleroi, in the south of Belgium. On 
the 16th his left wing, under Ney, was repulsed by Wellington at 
Quatre Bras. On the same day Napoleon defeated Bliicher at 
Ligny. On June 17th the allied commanders retired, by different 
routes, to the preconcerted scene of action at Waterloo, which 
Bliicher, however, was unable to reach in force until the afternoon 
of the great day. On June 18th the best-fought battle of modern 
days ended, with the Prussian arrival on the French right rear, in 
the total defeat of Napoleon's splendid army. On July 7th Paris 
was occupied by Wellington and Bliicher, and Louis XVIII. returned 
from his brief exile. The defeated man, unable to make his way 
to America owing to the vigilance of the British cruisers, gave 
himself up to Captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon, on July 15th. 
After a brief detention on board ship off our southern coast, he was 
conveyed as an exile to St. Helena, where he lived in captivity from 
October 15th, 18 15, until his death on May 5th, 1821, after the 
most remarkable career, considered in all points, in the whole 
history of the world. In 1840 his remains were removed from the 
Atlantic island to their present place of repose under the dome of 
the Hotel des Invalides in Paris. The most famous victims of the 
great man's final fall were " the bravest of the brave," Marshal Ney, 
shot in Paris on December 7th, 1815, as a traitor to Louis XVIII., 
and Murat, king of Naples, who, defeated by the Austrians on 
May 3rd, at Tolentino, in central Italy, made a reckless attempt to 
recover his throne by landing in Calabria, and was captured, 
tried and condemned by court-martial, and shot on October 13th, 
1815. 

The territory of Europe was now rearranged under the Peace of 
Paris of November 20th, 1815, and by the " Act of the Congress 
of Vienna." France received the boundaries of 1790, generally 
speaking, by surrendering fortresses and territory to the Netherlands 
and to Germany, and Savoy to Sardinia. A payment of 700,000,000 
francs (,£28,000,000 sterling) as war-indemnity was enforced by the 
occupation, for some years, of fortresses on the northern and eastern 



566 A History of the World 

borders by allied troops at the French charges. Works of art taken 
from Germany and Italy were reclaimed. Austria received the 
Milanese and Venice as the " Lombardo- Venetian kingdom," and 
recovered Illyria, Dalmatia, Salzburg, the Tyrol, and Gallicia. 
Prussia now had Posen (a part of the " grand-duchy of Warsaw ") 
with Danzig, also Swedish Pomerania with Riigen ; the old 
possessions in Westphalia, the lower Rhine duchy, and most of 
Saxony in return for the loss of territory to Bavaria, Hanover, and 
Russia. Holland and Austrian Belgium became a new " kingdom 
of the Netherlands," under the former hereditary stadtholder of 
Holland, as " King William I." A new " German Confederation " 
was formed, under the emperor of Austria as president, and comprised 
39 sovereign states, including the " free cities " of Liibeck, Bremen, 
Hamburg, and Frankfurt-on-the-Muin. The Diet, sitting at Frankfurt, 
was to decide on affairs common to all German states, and to settle 
disputes between the members of the Confederation. Each state 
was independent in regard to matters affecting itself alone. War 
was not to be declared by any state against any other in the 
Confederation, nor any alliance be formed with a foreign power 
which could be injurious to any German state. The Confederate 
army, composed of contingents furnished by every state in proportion 
to population, was to be commanded by men appointed by the Diet, 
and its troops were to garrison the fortresses of Luxemburg, Mainz 
(Mayence), and Landau, which were the property of the Confedera- 
tion. Members of all Christian sects were to have equal civil and 
political rights, and constitutional government was to be established 
in every state. In the division of territory Russia received most of 
the grand-duchy of Warsaw as "the kingdom of Poland." The 19 
cantons of Switzerland became 22 by the addition of Geneva, Valais, 
and Neuchatel, which had all been annexed to France under the 
Directory, and the whole Swiss territory was declared by the Congress 
to be perpetually neutral in European wars and inviolable. The 
Swiss Confederation was thus established, with a Diet, in which 
each state was represented, meeting alternately at Bern, Zurich, and 
Lucerne. In Italy, Sardinia received Genoa., and petty sovereignties 
were set up, in dependence on Austria, as the duchies of Tuscany, 
Lucca, Modena, and Parma. Finally, Great Britain retained, as 
her return for an expenditure of over ^"600,000,000 sterling, raising 
the National Debt to nearly ^900,000,000, the islands of Malta and 
Heligoland ; some French and Dutch colonies, in the West Indies, 
South America, the East, and South Africa ; and a protectorate of 



The Napoleonic War (1803-1 8 15) 567 

the "Republic of the Seven Ionian Islands." Of these, the Ionian 
Islands were given up to Greece in 1864, and Heligoland to Ger- 
many (the Empire) in July, 1890, in return for certain concessions 
in East Africa. We note that, in Germany, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, 
and Saxony remained as monarchies, the latter losing territory, as 
above, in punishment for adherence to Napoleon, and that Hanover, 
reverting to the possession of the British sovereign, became a 
kingdom. In Italy the Pope received again the central territory 
as the " States of the Church," and the Bourbons ruled in Naples 
and Sicily, the latter having been always retained, as an island made 
secure by British maritime supremacy. 

In British affairs during this period we may record, for 1809, 
the great exploit of Lord Cochrane (afterwards earl of Dundonald) 
with fireships in the Aix (or Basque) Roads, on the south-west 
coast of France, where that great naval hero destroyed four line-of- 
battle ships, and could have done much more save for the imbecility 
of his superior in command, Lord Gambier. In the same year 
the unfortunate Walcheren expedition, dispatched to the Scheldt 
for the purpose of assailing Napoleon's great naval arsenal at 
Antwerp, was an utter failure from the incompetence of the military 
commander, the earl of Chatham (Pitt's eldest brother), and of 
Admiral Sir Richard Strachan. Flushing was taken, and Walcheren 
occupied ; both were perfectly useless achievements. Antwerp was 
not approached until it was made safe by French reinforcements. 
Many millions of pounds were thus utterly wasted. Thousands 
of men died of the marsh-fevers, and the health of thousands more 
was wrecked for life. At the end of 1810, after a previous attack 
in 1788, George III. became permanently insane, and his eldest son, 
George Prince of Wales, assumed power as Prince Regent. It is 
more satisfactory to note that, a little before this period opens, the 
exertions of the benevolent Granville Sharp obtained from the 12 
judges, in 1772, in the famous case of the negro James Somerset, 
a confirmation of Lord Chief-Justice Mansfield's judgment that " the 
power claimed [of making a slave in England] never was in use 
here, or acknowledged by the law." It was thus decided that " a 
slave becomes free as soon as he sets foot on British ground." This 
victory of the early " abolitionists " was quickly followed up. In 
1787 Sharp formed the Association for the Abolition of Negro 
Slavery, and was strongly supported by Thomas Clarkson and by 
William Wilberforce, the able, pious, and eloquent M.P. for the 
county of York. The merchants of Bristol and Liverpool resisted 



568 A History of the World 

abolition, and the House of Commons for some years threw out 
all Bills. That noble-minded lover of freedom, Charles James Fox, 
lent his powerful aid, and in 1792 a Bill abolishing the slave-trade 
was passed in the Commons, but rejected in the Lords. At last, 
in 1807, the British slave-trade was assailed by the Abolition Act, 
inflicting pecuniary penalties. British subjects continued to carry 
on the wicked traffic under cover of the Spanish and Portuguese 
flags, and in 181 1 a Bill was unanimously carried making the slave- 
trade a felony liable to 14 years' transportation, or from three to 
five years' imprisonment with hard labour. An Act of 1824 made 
it "piracy," then a capital crime, and the statute of 1837, after the 
Act of 1833, emancipating all the slaves in British colonies, left 
trading in slaves punishable with transportation for life. 

In Russia, apart from her share in the Napoleonic wars, we find 
Alexander I. (1801-1825) as a man brought up, under the direction 
of the empress Catharine, his grandmother, in the most advanced 
ideas of the 18th century. On succeeding his murdered father, 
Paul I., in 1801, he did much to promote education, alleviate serfdom, 
and introduce a milder legal and administrative system. After the 
Peace of Tilsit, which made his policy hostile to Great Britain, 
Alexander attacked her ally, Sweden, and deprived her in war of 
the province of Finland. In war with Turkey, the Russian frontier 
was pushed farther to the south, and the Peace of Bucharest, 
in 181 2, conceding Bessarabia to Russia, made the river Pruth the 
boundary between the countries. When we look to the Scandinavian 
kingdoms, we find the French marshal Bernadotte, in the reign 
of Charles XIII. of Sweden (1809-1818), adopted in 1810 as heir 
to the throne. In 18 14 Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden, and 
Norway thus, after a long period of subservience to the Danes, 
had a revival of life and spirit in the recovery of rights, a liberal 
constitution, and a sense of national unity. 



The New Forces at Work 569 



BOOK IV. 

EUROPE FROM 18 15 TO 1898. 

Chapter I. — The New Forces at Work. 

The history of the 19th century is emphatically a history of vast and 
unexampled progress due to the extended and developed work of 
old, or the operation of new, forces in the physical, moral, political, 
and intellectual spheres of human life and labour. A long period 
of diplomatic intrigue and of monarchical misrule, a time of wars, 
treaties, and revolutions, has been succeeded by nearly a century 
of material, mental, and social change affecting every class, and most 
of all the great body of the people, in every civilised community. 
Wars there have been in Europe, but of very limited scope and 
duration compared with the struggles of the past. Still confining 
ourselves to Europe, we find that many new states have been 
created. One new empire exists in Germany. Six new kingdoms 
— Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Roumania, and Servia — ■ 
have arisen. Two new principalities — Montenegro and Bulgaria — 
are found on the map. Many petty states in Germany — to the great 
relief of geographical students and Continental travellers — have been 
absorbed by Prussia and vanished from independent existence. 
Change after change has taken place in the form of government 
in France. All these changes of frontier and of rulers are trivial 
compared with those caused by the transcendent and transforming 
power of steam and electricity, and by the working of the democratic 
spirit which had its first strong modern expression in the American 
colonies of Great Britain and, for Europe, in the great French 
Revolution. The agency of steam, as applied to manufactures, 
navigation, and land-locomotion, has exceeded, in the character and 
degree of the changes thereby wrought, that of all other human 
inventions. The first real steam-engine was due to the Devonshire 
man named Newcomen early in the 18th century. The first really 
valuable production, rendering the application of steam possible in 
all industries, came from the Scottish James Watt, about 70 years 
later. The first British steamboat was probably one built by- 
Symington at Edinburgh in 1786, but the first regular service of 
vessels driven by steam arose in the United States about the same 
time. Railroads of iron were first used in England of all countries, 



570 A History of the World 

and that about 1770. The first application of steam to railroads 
was due, in 1813, to William Hedley, but it was George Stephenson 
who, in 1814, vastly improved the locomotive-engine, and con- 
structed, 15 years later, the Rocket engine which was first really 
efficient for a high speed. We need not dwell on the marvellous 
effects of steam-locomotion on human life in times of peace and on 
the work of soldiers in war. It is quite certain that war has lost half 
its horrors in the swift decision between combatant nations rendered 
possible by the improved means of transport to fields of battle. 

As railways are the arteries, so the electric wires are the nerves, 
of the modern social, economical, and political organism, anni- 
hilating time in the transmission of news, and bringing the whole 
civilised world into the compass of a single parish for the inter- 
change of sympathy and thought. For this use of electricity 
mankind are indebted conjointly to Germany, Great Britain, and 
the United States. The first really efficient land-telegraph by means 
of wires was used in England in the year of Queen Victoria's acces- 
sion ; the first submarine-cable was laid in 1850 between Dover 
and Cape Grisnez ; the first efficient and permanent ocean-line was 
laid in 1866 between Ireland and Newfoundland. Volumes would 
be needed to deal with the changes wrought on the conditions of 
life in civilised countries by scientific discovery, by ingenious 
invention, and by the energetic development of resources which had 
previously been only in partial use. The mere names of things are 
sufficient for the thoughtful — lucifer matches, gas, the cheap postal 
system, the penny and halfpenny newspaper, cheap popular litera 
ture, the sewing-machine, the omnibus, the tram-car, and many other 
improvements. The greatest triumphs of human skill and organisa- 
tion are to be found in that moving palatial hotel, the great ocean- 
liner, and in the production and contents of the daily newspaper. 
The revolution in naval and military warfare due to scientific 
invention and improvement needs no detailed description here. 
The peaceful achievements of the 19th century are before us, in 
the last years of the last decade of that period, in the shape of 
changes beyond all comparison the greatest in the world's history 
for abiding and far-reaching influence. The conquest of natural 
forces has been followed by an enormous increase of wealth and 
population ; by the colonisation of vast regions of the earth which 
were once either void or peopled only by a few savages ; by the 
extension of the span of human life ; by the wider distribution, in 
many countries, of the necessaries, the comforts, and some of the 



The New Forces at Work 5 7 1 

luxuries of life among those who are the creators of all wealth by 
the work of their hands. The existence of old and the rise of new 
evils, along with material improvements, have been met by fresh 
activity in philanthropic work, and by the creation of a great and 
complex system of charitable agencies dealing with every phase of 
the mischief which keen competition, the unequal distribution of 
wealth, human greed, and human mental, physical, and moral frailty, 
have created in the midst of what is called our " modern civilisa- 
tion." We turn from this tempting subject, and from any effort to 
deal with the domain of philosophy, science, theology, literature, 
and art, to the special subject of this work, political development 
and change. 

The chief note of the 19th century is the vast increase of popular 
power, the rise and progress of the democracy, in which term is 
here included tne great middle class, that below the titled and 
landed aristocracy and above the manual workers. The growth 
of the people, attended by a great increase of political, religious, 
and personal freedom, and by the application of more beneficent 
methods of rule, has given rise to new political and social problems 
concerning representative government, local self-government, the 
rights of labour, national and technical education, and other matters, 
causing, from time to time, minor revolutions, insurrections, riots, 
strikes, political and social congresses, endlessly various hostile and 
friendly conflict, discussion, and debate. It was the French Revolu- 
tion which, for good or ill, swept away old ideas along with 
antiquated institutions ; which taught governments of all kinds 
that they exist, not for themselves or for a class, but for the benefit 
of the community at large ; which made the masses of the people 
know their power, and strive to impress it, in lawful or unlawful 
ways, by remonstrance or appeal or peaceful agitation, or by threats 
or violence, on the holders of rule. To the principles established 
by the French Revolution, when the first evil effects of excess had 
passed away from the terrorised minds of moderate men, are due 
the rise of Italy, the freedom of Greece, the final abolition of 
serfdom ; with the advance of religious toleration, a large measure 
of liberty for the press, and a great share of self-government, in all 
European countries except Russia and Turkey. The evil attendant 
on the great political earthquake, that " open violent rebellion, 
and victory, of dis-imprisoned anarchy against corrupt worn-out 
authority," that volcanic outburst of disintegrating rage, which 
occurred more than a century ago in France, has passed away, and 



572 A History of the World 

the good, in many forms, survives, likely to last as long as the 
world endures. The advance of modern democracy has overthrown 
in western and central Europe the remains of the feudal system, 
and replaced absolute government, in most countries, by one based 
on either universal or extensive suffrage. Its main features are 
those of complete personal freedom, with a career open to character 
and ability ; equality before the law ; and political power in the 
suffrage exercised through a representative parliamentary system. 
Along with these go universal education, and, on the European 
continent, general liability to military service. The growth of 
democratic power has been parallel with that of every other factor 
in the social life of mankind— the development of the art of 
printing, of industrial activity, of improvement in man's technical 
skill and resources, of human mastery over nature. The average 
standard of intelligence and morality has been greatly raised, and 
with the continuous education which exists in modern life in the 
elementary school, the workshop, the municipal and political 
agitation and discussion which culminate in the dropping of papers 
in a ballot-box, there has come to the great body of citizens a 
sense of responsibility forming the best safeguard against the evils 
connected with communism, socialism, nihilism, anarchism, and 
other schemes. These, originating in the minds of benevolent 
theorists, have been too often perverted by wild fanatics or by mere 
idle miscreants to the worst uses. 

The socialism which aimed at social reconstruction and renova- 
tion on an optimistic basis of belief in human perfectibility has been 
discredited. The scientific socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle, the 
founder of the social-democratic movement in Germany, and, partly, 
of Karl Marx, the originator of the international socialistic move- 
ment, involves a reorganisation of matters between the worker, or 
receiver of wages, and the capitalist, with a view to a fairer distribution 
of the wealth produced by work, through the intervention of the 
state as an organiser in the new capacity of the promoter of freedom, 
culture, morality, and progress, instead of its former function as a 
mere policeman or protector of property. In this form, socialistic 
theory has already had a great influence on the labour-movement in 
every part of the civilised world. The famous " International " 
or " International Working-Men's Association " was founded in 
London, in 1864, chiefly by Karl Marx, but, after the holding of 
congresses in Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels, Basle, and other towns, 
this organisation came to an end in 1873. The socialist parties, 



The New Forces at Work 573 

however, in different countries, regard the movement as international, 
and their views and feelings have repeatedly found expression at 
congresses, as at Ghent in 1877, and at Paris in 1889, the centenary 
year of the French Revolution. In Germany the movement has 
made great political progress. It was in 1875 that German socialists 
drew together at Gotha. Eight years previously five members of 
the party had been elected to the North German Reichstag or 
Parliament. At the elections, in 187 1, to the first Reichstag of 
the new Empire, the socialists polled only 120,000 votes; in 1877 
this number had grown to nearly 500,000. Exceptional legislation 
against the rising party did not prevent the increase of votes in 1890 
to nearly 1,500,000, or about 20 per cent, of the total poll, with a 
considerable progress shown in rural and Catholic districts hitherto 
almost untouched by the movement. Denmark also now has a 
large number of socialists, and outside these two countries there is 
no very large known class of active and avowed adherents. The 
chief permanent result, at present, of the socialistic movement has 
been the development of wider and better views of political economy 
as that which should be subordinate to the welfare of mankind. 
The cause of the poor has thus been brought with great influence 
before society, and that which is styled "Christian socialism " seeks 
to remedy the inequalities of the distribution of wealth by insisting 
persuasively on liberal contributions from the rich towards all 
schemes devised for the benefit of the impoverished and suffering. 

The working of modern democracy is very favourably seen on 
the side of thrift, provident insurance, and co-operation. The 
" Friendly Societies," " Industrial Assurance Companies," and other 
mutual provident associations of the British Isles possess funds 
probably exceeding ^25,000,000 sterling. Co-operation, meaning 
generally the association of workers for the management of their 
own industrial interests, in the store, the workshop, or other under- 
taking, with a fair distribution of profits among those who earn 
them, has been largely adopted in various forms. In Great Britain 
the movement has had its chief success in the way of distribution 
through stores supplying the household needs of workmen and their 
families. Since the establishment of the society called the Rochdale 
Pioneers, in 1844, vast progress has been made, and many hundreds 
of such organisations are now at work, selling goods at the current 
prices of shopkeepers, and sharing the net profits quarterly among 
members in proportion to the amount of their purchases. The 
benefit to the working-class obviously consists in their capture, by 



574 A History of the World 

this means, of the profits of the " middleman " and of the retail- 
shopkeeper, by direct purchase in the wholesale market, and direct 
transmission to the consumer. The " Wholesale Society," which is 
a federation of retail societies, confers further benefit by co-operative 
production on a large scale, the annual value of goods now reaching 
several millions sterling. The Civil Service Associations and Army 
and Navy Stores render like service to the middle classes, and the 
whole community has received advantage in the enforced reduction 
of shopkeepers' charges through the competition due to the 
co-operative principle. This established institution had its origin 
with the better class of workmen, the more enlightened part of the 
new democracy, aided by the intelligence and philanthropy of 
such men as Robert Owen, the Rev. J. F. D. Maurice, the 
Rev. Charles Kingsley, and other social reformers, among whom 
we must not forget to name George Jacob Holyoake, the veteran 
historian of Co-operation, Thomas Hughes" (" Tom Brown "), and 
the marquis of Ripon. It is remarkable that in the United States, 
the greatest of democracies, the co-operative system has not made 
great progress, perhaps owing to the large scope there afforded for 
individual energy and enterprise. In France the chief development 
of the system has been in the form of industrial partnership, whereby 
the workmen share in the profits of the capitalist. In Germany, 
Austria, and Hungary the principle has been chiefly active in the 
form of people's banks, along with many hundreds of societies for 
distribution of goods, the purchase of raw material, and other 
beneficial ends. Germany and Denmark have applied co-operation 
with great success to dairies, and England, Sweden, Switzerland, 
and Holland have also followed the lead of the United States and 
Canada, where the factory-system of production, or associated 
dairying, exists on an enormous scale. In Italy co-operation has 
made great progress in the form of people's banks, and there are 
also many co-operative bakeries and dairies, the movement being 
actively supported by the government. Belgium has also developed 
the system in the way of co-operative bakeries, fisheries, and stores. 
It is in these institutions that the democratic movement is seen at 
its best, the people managing their own affairs, acquiring intelligence, 
commercial skill, and higher moral character, and deriving benefit 
from foresight, thrift, and self-control, in alliance for truly legitimate 
and peaceful aims. 

No account of the modern democracy can omit reference to 
another form of combination — that of the workers or wage-earners 



The New Forces at Work 575 

against the capitalists or large employers for the purpose of keeping- 
up or raising the rate of wages in various trades. For British 
readers " strikes " and " trades-unions " are words of somewhat 
sinister sound. In this country, in their modern form, the com- 
binations known as trades-unions arose in the 18th century with 
attempts of artisans to enforce trade-customs under various charters 
and statutes dating from Tudor and even from Plantagenet days. 
Many legislative measures — the " Combination laws " — were passed 
to check the action of the manual workers in this direction, but 
the advance of democratic influence in Parliament has for many years 
done away with all restraints on trade-unionism so long as members 
of the unions do not, by threats or violence, interfere with the 
freedom of others. The deplorable effects of strikes are in most 
cases now averted, more or less, sooner or later, by the methods 
of conciliation and arbitration between employers and employed, 
and the decision of the chosen umpire or umpires is almost always 
loyally accepted on both sides. The principle of trade-unionism 
is now, in this country, recognised and approved in every quarter 
— in Parliament, the pulpit, the press, and on the platform — and 
it is probable that the United Kingdom now contains considerably 
more than 2,000 trade-societies, with a total of members approaching 
3,000,000 and an annual income exceeding ^2,000,000 sterling. 
The benefits of these societies for the workers, apart from any 
advantage due to judicious "strikes," are seen in the weekly 
payments to sick and unemployed members, and in pensions to 
men beyond the age for work ; in allowances for members disabled 
by accident, and for funeral -charges ; in insurance against loss 
of tools by fire, and in benevolent grants of various kinds. The 
amount of good hereby effected may be, in a slight degree, esti- 
mated from the fact that 13 societies, in 40 years, awarded 
in " provident benefits " alone, i.e. in addition to pay during 
strikes, nearly ^7,500,000 sterling, while their total strike-pay, 
during the same period, was less than ^500,000. These very 
societies were, moreover, those whose members had secured and 
maintained the highest rates of wages, the shortest hours of work, 
and the best conditions of labour enjoyed by industrial workers 
throughout the country. It is impossible to over-estimate the 
material and moral benefit derived from so splendid a display 
of self-help, of lawful combination, in the once down-trodden 
creators of a country's wealth who now, in proud self-respect, 

with the sanction of all classes, and in defiance of the pauperism 

33 



576 A History of the World 

which looks to outside support, maintain their own poor, succour 
their own sick, feed their own aged and infirm, bury their own 
dead, aid their own sufferers in every case of accident and adversity, 
pay all local rates and taxes like other citizens, and often afford 
generous aid, in time of need, to other associations of workers 
like to themselves. Thrift, sobriety, discipline, order, and obedience 
to law are inculcated, encouraged, and enforced, and in the great 
engineers' strike of 1897-98 the high praise of the German 
Emperor, a potentate of no democratic views, was elicited by the 
fact that, during a period of great tension and of no small suffering, 
no serious breach of law on the part of a vast body of working- 
men and their dependents ever occurred. In other European 
countries trade-unionism is by no means so advanced as in Great 
Britain, but progress is being made under the influence of the 
international labour-congresses, and the chief need is the " freedom 
of combination," under legal sanction, which exists in this country. 
The labour-organisations of the United States are on an extensive 
scale, but inferior in working to the British models. The Australian 
colonies, far ahead of all other colonies in this respect, have 
excellent unions of the best home-type. 

A grand proof of advancing enlightenment in the 19th century 
is seen in the development of public international law known as 
"arbitration." As a positive system, international law has arisen in 
Europe only since the 16th century, in succession to the formerly 
beneficent action exercised by the authority of the Church and by 
the principles of chivalry. Papal authority and advice often settled 
quarrels between states, and the evils of warfare were lessened by 
the practice of chivalrous virtues. It was after the atrocities of the 
struggle between Spain and the revolted Netherlands, and the 
outrages perpetrated during the Thirty Years' War, that the general 
feeling of Europe had a grievous want supplied by the rise of a 
system of international jurisprudence. The first systematic rules 
were laid down by the great Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, in his work 
De Jure Belli ac Pacis, published in 1625. Upon the deep founda- 
tions laid by a writer who combined profound learning and keen 
philosophic insight with great experience in worldly affairs, inter- 
national law still securely rests. The recognised rules depend in 
a large measure upon awards given by arbitrators, upon the judg- 
ments of mixed prize-courts appointed under treaty, and upon the 
decisions of the British Court of Admiralty and like tribunals in 
maritime affairs. Express treaties concluded between sovereign 



Great Britain and Ireland 577 

states deal with many cases which might, in former times, have 
given rise to war, and in disputes to which recognised rules do not 
apply large recourse has been made in these later years to the 
method of arbitration by a specially chosen tribunal or by some 
friendly sovereign. Notable instances are found in the dealings 
between Great Britain and the United States, as the settlement, in 
1872, of the famous Alabama claims by five arbitrators sitting at 
Geneva, and, in the same year, the arrangement of the dispute 
concerning the possession of San Juan Island, near Vancouver's 
Island, by the Emperor William of Germany. In 1885 Pope 
Leo XIII., acting as arbitrator, settled a dispute between Germany 
and Spain regarding the possession of the Caroline Islands. The 
most accomplished of European monarchs, Oscar II. of Sweden 
and Norway, holds the highest position in this peaceful and 
beneficent work of arbitrating on international questions. 

Chapter II. — Great Britain and Ireland. 

In 1 8 16 a British fleet under Lord Exmouth, aided by a small Dutch 
squadron, inflicted a signal chastisement upon the modern " Barbary 
corsairs " in the bombardment of Algiers. With a loss of nearly 
1,000 men in killed and wounded on the victorious side, the Dey's 
fleet of many frigates and gunboats was fired; the strong batteries 
were knocked to pieces ; and he was forced to liberate the whole 
of the Christian captives, to the number of about 1,650, chiefly 
Italians taken from small trading and fishing vessels. The same 
British admiral had previously, by the mere display of his force, 
effected the release of about 1,800 Christian slaves at Algiers, 
Tripoli, and Tunis. There was some further trouble with the 
obstinate and truculent Dey even after this lesson, and Barbary 
piracy ceased only with the French conquest of Algiers. 

The ending of foreign warfare was followed by a period of 
domestic trouble in the British Isles. Bad harvests, and the high 
price of bread due to iniquitous duties on corn, caused much distress 
and discontent, under which artisans waged war against machinery, 
and rioters, called "Luddites" from Ned Ludd, a half-witted lad 
who broke some stocking-frames, did much damage in the great 
manufacturing districts of the Midlands and the north of England. 
The peasants, in the rage of misery, burned the ricks of farmers. 
The " Radicals," as the advanced Liberals were called, were 
agitating for parliamentary reform, in order to remedy evils by new 



578 A History of the World 

legislation. Unwise and unsympathetic ministers resisted agitation 
by repressive measures, suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in 181 7, 
and passing, two years later, the famous " Six Acts '' against all 
attempts, harmful or harmless, to change the state of affairs. The 
hero of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo was, under the influence 
of aristocratic prejudice, by no means a model of wisdom in domestic 
matters, though his sturdy honesty and simplicity of character, and 
his sagacity with regard to yielding when longer resistance meant 
civil war, were in favourable contrast to the proceedings of some 
extreme partisans of his political school. In July, 1819, a peaceful 
meeting held at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, was dispersed with 
bloodshed by military force, and the angry reformers, in sarcastic 
allusion to Wellington's last victory, styled the outrage the " Battle" 
(or " Massacre ") of Peterloo. Among other events of this period 
may be noted the lamentable death, in November, 181 7, of the 
Prince-Regent's only child, the Princess Charlotte, with her newly 
born infant, son of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, afterwards the 
first king of the Belgians. She was heiress-apparent to the throne, 
and was universally regarded with well-grounded hope as an excellent 
future sovereign. In May, 1819, the birth of a princess, only child 
of Ekhvard, duke of Kent, fourth son of George III., gave to the 
nation the A r ictoria who, as queen for more than 60 years, was 
to replace her who had so lately passed away. The death of the 
aged king in January, 1820, brought the Prince Regent to the throne 
as George IV. (1820- 1830). A chief event of his reign, known 
from the British histories, was the desperate " Cato-Street Con- 
spiracy," of February, 1820, formed by Arthur Thistlewood, for the 
simultaneous murder, at a dinner-party, of all the cabinet-ministers, 
to be followed by the firing of London barracks, the seizure of the 
Bank and the Tower, and the setting-up of a republic. The leaders 
in this mad scheme were hanged, after betrayal of the plot and 
seizure of many conspirators at their meeting-place in Cato Street, 
near the Edgware Road in London. In the same and following 
years, great scandal was caused by the trial of Queen Caroline for 
misconduct as a wife, under a " Bill of Pains and Penalties," 
"virtually an impeachment, brought into the House of Lords at the 
king's instance. A strong popular feeling in her favour was aroused, 
and she was so ably defended by counsel who included Brougham, 
afterwards Lord Chancellor, and Uenman, who became Lord Chief- 
Justice, that the proceedings were abandoned. The hapless lady, 
who may be justly regarded as rather grossly indiscreet and 



Great Britain and Ireland 579 

indecorous in conduct than as guilty of what was alleged, was a 
Brunswick princess, the king's first cousin. She died in August, 182 1, 
after a vain attempt to obtain admission to Westminster Abbey at 
the king's coronation, which she claimed to share. There are other 
events which will be seen in the history of Greece and of Ireland, 
and the reforming legislation which opened in this reign is 
elsewhere noticed. 

Under William IV. (1830-1837), third son of George III. (his 
second son, the duke of York, having died in 1827), the period of 
progress was fairly opened by the passing, in 1832, of the First 
Reform Act. The persistent opposition in the House of Lords, 
led by the duke of Wellington, had caused serious riots at 
Nottingham, Derby, and Bristol, and had brought the country 
within measurable distance of civil war. The final surrender of 
the Lords, at the instance of the duke, and the king's assent, 
made law of the measure which conferred a large share of political 
power on the great middle class of traders, farmers, and professional 
men. Many small boroughs lost their two members ; many more 
lost one; and nearly 150 seats in the House of Commons were 
thus given to large towns, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and 
others, hitherto unrepresented, to new divisions of counties, and to 
new districts of London. The Scottish members were raised from 
45 t0 53 3 the vote m counties was given to tenan.s paying an 
annual rent of ,£50, and to owners of land or houses worth _^to 
a year; and in boroughs householders paying ^10 a year rent 
were enfranchised. 

The events of the glorious and happy reign of Queen Victoria 
(1837-) need little notice for readers of a work published in the 
country where two jubilee-celebrations, at the completion of the 
50th and 60th years of the longest reign of our annals, brought 
forth a special and abundant crop of books dealing with every 
feature of the sovereign's life and character, every domestic and 
foreign occurrence connected with that illustrious and venerable 
lady's career. The Victorian age has been, beyond all others in 
all history, one of progress and colonial expansion. Two more 
series of legislative measures completed the democratic constitutions 
of the British Empire at home. In 1867-68 the Second Reform 
Acts gave votes to most householders in boroughs, and to the 
better class of lodgers. In the counties all tenants paying ,£12 
annual rent received the franchise, n English boroughs lost 
their two members, and 23 others lost one member each. 25 



580 A History of the World 

seats were given to new boroughs, and to the London and the 
grouped Scottish universities, and 28 members were assigned 
to fresh divisions of counties. Scotland received seven more 
members by transference from England, and her number was thus 
raised to 60. This statute invested a large part of the better 
class of artisans with political power. The Acts of 1884-85 gave 
votes to the agricultural labourers, and to a large additional number 
of artisans, by granting the franchise to all householders in county- 
divisions who did not possess votes for borough-elections to the 
House of Commons. The present number of voters thus exceeds 
6,000,000, and the constitution of the United Kingdom has become 
that of a republic, wiih powerful aristocratic and plutocratic 
elements, and with the great advantage of a hereditary president 
representing a dynasty regarded by all classes with the utmost 
loyalty. Ireland, for the first time in her history, was placed on an 
electoral equality with the sister-countries by receiving pure and 
simple household-suffrage. The lodger-franchise was extended to 
the counties, and a new " service-franchise " gave a vote to any man 
inhabiting a house in connection with any office or employment. 
18 members, six of whom were taken from seats belonging to 
boroughs disfranchised, for "bribery and corruption," since 1867, 
were added to the House of Commons, raising the number of 
representatives to 670. It was the "redistribution of seats" part 
of this measure which gave it a very distinctive character. No 
borough with a population below 15,000 was now allowed to have 
separate representation, the householders and lodgers receiving 
votes for the county-divisions in which they dwelt. All boroughs 
between 15,000 and 20,000 in population lost one seat, if they had 
two, and by these changes 144 seats, in addition to the above 18, 
were placed at the disposal of the framers of the Bill. Two English 
counties, Rutland and Hereford, each lost a member, and the City 
of London was deprived of two out of four. The total number of 
seats for disposal thus became 166. A near approach was then 
made to representation in proportion to numbers of the population 
in each constituency, the present proportion, in the English boroughs, 
being one member, roughly speaking, to every 70,000 inhabitants. 
The counties and the great boroughs were broken up into single- 
member divisions. The changes thus introduced were of a startling 
character, especially in London. The capital now had 62 members ; 
Liverpool nine ; Birmingham and Glasgow, each seven ; Manchester 
six ; Leeds and Sheffield, each five ; and so on in proportion to 



Great Britain and Ireland 581 

numbers. Many new county-subdivisions were created, each with 
one member ; Lancashire, under the new arrangement of seats, 
being represented, in county-divisions alone, by 22 members, and 
Yorkshire, apart from the numerous borough-members, by 26. The 
great increase of population and wealth in Scotland was recognised 
by the assignment to the northern kingdom of 12 additional seats, 
making her representation consist of 72 members. We proceed 
to describe briefly the progressive legislation mainly due to the 
first two of the three Reform Acts whereby a large body of the 
people became possessed of the power of self-government in the 
free choice of representatives in the House of Commons. 

Dealing first with religious freedom, we find that in 1828 the 
repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts of later Stuart days 
enabled Catholics and Protestant dissenters to hold municipal and 
other offices. The Catholic Emancipation Act will be seen under 
the history of Ireland during this period. In 1S36 another relic 
of religious bigotry and intolerance was swept away by the Marriage 
Act which enabled marriages to be legally contracted in Noncon- 
formist chapels and at registrars' offices. Jews had been excluded 
from Parliament, after the repeal of the Test Act in 1828, by the 
words " on the true faith of a Christian " inserted in the declaration 
made by a member on taking his seat. A Bill for abolishing the 
civil disabilities of the Jews in the British Isles was passed in 1833 
by the House of Commons, but the measure was rejected by the 
Lords, and an act of justice was thus postponed until 1858, when 
Jews were admitted to both Houses, the first Jewish peer being 
Lord Rothschild, created in 1885. Up to a date beyond the 
middle of Victoria's reign, Nonconformists were compelled to pay 
Church-rates for the support of the Establishment, and resistance 
to this grievous injustice was often met by the issue of "distress- 
warrants " under which the plate-baskets of Dissenters were emptied 
and their kitchens rifled of goods. Year by year the struggle 
against the exaction was doggedly carried on in the parish-vestries 
and in the law-courts, and the difficulty of collecting the impost 
increased. A strong stand was made in the eastern counties, 
and a case known as " the Braintree case," from a parish in Essex, 
after 18 years of litigation and 13 legal decisions, gave a virtual 
death-blow to compulsory Church-rates by establishing the principle 
that no rate could be valid which was not made by a majority 
assembled in vestry. In 1868 an Act removed this grievance. 
The abolition of religious tests in regard to education was another 



582 A History of the World 

step in advance. The restrictions which existed were such as to 
confine to Churchmen most of the advantages of the national 
universities and of the ancient grammar-schools and other educa- 
tional foundations. In 1871 an Act threw open to Nonconformists 
all lay-degrees at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Two 
years later religious tests were abolished at Trinity College, Dublin. 
Another grievance of Nonconformists was the deprivation of the 
right of burial for their dead in parish churchyards with the usual 
service. In many a rural parish, the rector or vicar, basing his 
bigotry upon the rubric prefixed to " The Order for the Burial of 
the Dead " — that the Office is not to be used for any that die 
unbaptised — refused to read the service over the remains of any 
unbaptised Nonconformist children or adults, or to allow a Dissent- 
ing minister to supply his place. Nonconformist ministers, with 
mourning relatives, were in such cases compelled to stand outside 
churchyard-walls, in a field or on the public highway, and there 
conduct funeral-services for those who were being laid in the 
ground inside the walls. The great Archbishop Tait of Canterbury 
admitted this state of the law to be " barbarous." In 1880 the 
Burial Laws Amendment Act granted freedom in this respect 
to Nonconformists, permitting them to enter the churchyards and 
there, with due notice, conduct their own religious service over their 
dead. 

Freedom of the press from shackles grievously restricting its 
power for good began in 1836 with the reduction of the hateful 
stamp-duty of fourpence per copy on all newspapers to a penny- 
duty. Even thus, a really cheap newspaper was impossible, because 
a heavy paper-duty still existed in addition to the stamp-charge. 
In 1849 an association was formed for the "Repeal of the Taxes 
on Knowledge." In a few years persistent effort, in and out of 
Parliament, had its reward. In 1853 a budget of Mr. Gladstone's 
removed the tax of is. 6d. on every advertisement. Two years later 
the same statesman, in his budget, abolished the stamp-duty. In 
1 86 1 the same statesman caused the repeal of the paper-duty, and 
rendered possible the present enormous development, assuredly 
more for good than for evil, of the production of newspapers and 
books within the purchasing-power of the humblest reader. 

In the days of County-councils and Parish-councils, municipal 
reform is an interesting subject. In the course of time the municipal 
government of towns had fallen into the hands of small self-chosen 
bodies, and the most scandalous and corrupt administration of 



Great Britain and Ireland 583 

affairs existed in more than 200 boroughs of England and Wales. 
The body of the citizens were the victims of treatment inadequately 
described by " jobbery " and " robbery." The funds of the corpora- 
tion were largely diverted to periodical guzzling of aldermen and 
councillors, and to other base uses, including bribery and treating 
at parliamentary elections. Charity-funds for which the members 
of the corporation were trustees were often shamelessly stolen. The 
Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 swept away, in most of the 
cities and towns, this iniquitous system, and gave the administration 
of local affairs — gas, police, paving, cleansing, water-supply, and 
other matters — to councils freely chosen by the ratepayers who 
supply the funds. A new sense of citizenship thus arose, and with 
freedom came her beneficent train of attendants — energy, enterprise, 
a sense of responsibility, a just pride in good effected, resolution to 
do better still. A grievous want of the age — sanitary reform — could 
now be supplied, and the increase of medical knowledge was turned 
to beneficial use by reformers and legislators. Dr. Southwood 
Smith, Sir Edwin Chad wick, Dr. William Farr, and Sir Benjamin 
Ward Richardson are the men most justly honoured in this line, 
and to the legislature influenced by their labours and reports 
British citizens owe the Local Government Act of 1858, the Public 
Health Act of 1875, and other measures which have greatly and 
permanently lowered the annual death-rate in towns, and have 
made life, for all classes of the community, much better worth 
living. The County Councils measure, or Local Government Act, 
of 1888, extended to Scotland in the following year, created in 
England and Wales 60 " administrative counties " or districts, with 
aldermen and councillors, to control affairs previously regulated by 
irresponsible justices in quarter-sessions. A very wide and im- 
portant system of local government is thus exercised by persons 
elected by resident ratepayers, and highly beneficial results have 
been already attained. The Parish Councils Act of 1894 completed 
the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer by giving him self- 
government through his vote at meetings for the election of over- 
seers, the management of allotments, the control of sanitary matters, 
and the regulation of parish-property and parish-charities. 

The reform of the judicial system is another matter due to 
legislation in the 19th century. In i8ol there were more than 
200 capital offences on the statute-book, these, however, being in 
practice reduced to about 25. A complete change of the barbarous 
system of punishments came through the efforts of Jeremy Bentham, 



584 A History of the World 

the great "jurist and philosopher, James Mill, Sir Samuel Romilly, 
Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir Robert Peel. Between 1823 and 
1830 Mackintosh and Peel, in the House of Commons, procured 
the passing of Acts which abolished capital punishment in most 
cases, and in 1837 the same legislation was applied to the offence 
of forgery. In 1861 only four crimes remained subject to death 
as a punishment — murder, treason, piracy with violence, and the 
wilful firing of arsenals or dockyards. The treatment of prisoners 
of all classes has been greatly improved, both in regard to humanity 
and to reforming and deterrent effect, and the proportion of 
criminals to population has very largely decreased, especially in 
the juvenile class. This result is mainly due to the establishment, 
in 1870 and 1872, for England and Wales, and for Scotland, of a 
thorough national system of elementary schools. This great work 
is mainly carried on by Board Schools and in voluntary schools 
controlled by the clergy or by Nonconformist ministers and laymen. 
Recent legislation has established compulsory attendance, with free- 
dom, in most cases, from payment of school-fees. We can here 
only allude to a wide subject in the philanthropic legislation 
specially connected with the honoured name of " the good Lord 
Shaftesbury." To him and to men of like benevolence is due the 
legislation protecting workers in factories and mines from the cruelty 
and other evils due to ignorance, carelessness, and human greed. 
Philanthropic effort in every direction is one of the chief glories 
of Great Britain in the Victorian age, the names of Peabody and 
Plimsoll, Andrew Reed and Barnardo, Benjamin Waugh and 
Burdett-Coutts, George Miiller and Samuel Morley, being among 
those most worthy of honour in this matter. We must close our 
notice of a few of the countless changes in a great age of progress 
by noting the abolition of flogging in the army and navy; the legisla- 
tion protecting women in regard to property ; the freedom of voting 
secured by the Ballot Act ; the stern action taken against electoral 
corruption ; and the freedom of trade obtained in legislation which 
repealed the Corn-laws and gave the people cheap bread, which 
swept away the Navigation Acts and threw open our ports to foreign 
vessels, which removed the duties from the raw materials of manu- 
factures and from almost all articles of food, and thus added 
inconceivably to the comfort and prosperity of the nation. 

Among the miscellaneous events of the period we note the 
Great Exhibitions of the Works of Art and Industry of All Nations 
held in 1851 and 1862, and the very important Colonial and 






Great Britain and Ireland 585 

Indian Exhibition of 1886, which had a great effect in drawing 
the attention of the British public to our vast empire existing 
in other quarters of the world. That interesting, beautiful, and 
instructive display of productions of the Queen's dominions outside 
Europe first aroused the dwellers in the British Isles to something 
like a due sense of the reality and greatness of the empire of 
which, in territorial area, these islands form only an eightieth 
part. They began to see that the colonies were worth retaining 
in the bonds of mutual self-interest and loyal devotion to the 
same ruler, and there can be no doubt that the revived interest 
in the imperial naval forces is closely connected with the thoughts 
and feelings aroused in the minds and hearts of all true patriots 
by the great event of 1886. In connection with home-defence, 
we note the abolition, in 187 1, of the purchase of army-commissions, 
and the throwing open of the military service to gentlemen qualified, 
not by the possession of pecuniary resources, but by fitness proved 
by preliminary and by professional competitive examinations. This 
measure was parallel to that by which, in 1870, all posts in the Civil 
Service, except in the Foreign Office and the Treasury, were 
opened to competitive examination. Army-reform has included 
the establishment of the short-service system by which a powerful 
reserve of troops has been created ; and the enrolment, as auxiliary 
forces, of the volunteers, the first of whom came forward in 1859, 
in reply to French bluster concerning invasion, due to certain 
colonels who were enraged by an attempt, planned here by foreign 
exiles, to assassinate the emperor Louis Napoleon. 

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was an event of great 
importance for the vast and ever-growing British commerce in 
affording a new route, without transshipment of cargo and passengers, 
to the Eastern world and Australasia. The actual time of steaming 
between London and Sydney, for example, has thus been reduced 
to about 30 days. The death of the Prince Consort in December, 
1 86 1, was an immense loss, not only to the Queen whom he so 
faithfully aided in her high duties, but to the nation whom he 
most ably served, with the rarest discretion and self-control, in 
diplomatic and social affairs. He was one of the foremost men 
of his time in intellect, virtue, and force of character, a man who 
sought, in his adopted country, to bring the people nearer to 
the throne by a just use of the influence of the crown for the 
improvement of the social conditions. His culture in science, 
literature, and art; his faculty of accurate observation; and his 



586 A History of the World 

sound judgment, enabled him to render great services to .the 
advance of civilisation in the British Isles. The two " Great 
Exhibitions " were mainly due to his initiative and superintend- 
ence, and his whole course of life was such as to enable him to 
bequeath a stainless memory to his widow, his children, and the 
empire. The " Cotton Famine " in Lancashire, a period of distress 
lasting from 1862 to 1865, caused by the lack of raw cotton for the 
mills, owing to the blockade of ports, during the Civil War in 
America, in the Southern or " Confederate " states which were the 
chief sources of supply, was made notable by the wonderful patience 
and quietness displayed by the sufferers, a result largely due to the 
cheapness of bread given by the repeal of the Corn-laws, to the 
bountiful and judicious charity of their fellow-countrymen, and to 
the knowledge of the artisans that the contest beyond the ocean, 
the struggle to which their penury was due, was one waged for the 
abolition of slavery. The noble-minded President of the Federal 
(or Northern, Anti-slavery) States, Abraham Lincoln, a man whose 
name and fame have long overcome the superficial condemnation 
and base detraction of certain sections of the British press and 
nation in his own day, received an address from the working-men 
of Manchester, expressing their abhorrence of slavery. In his 
reply, dated January 19th, 1863, he referred to this utterance, made 
by such persons, in such circumstances of unmerited, inevitable 
suffering, as " an instance of sublime Christian heroism not surpassed 
in any age or any country." It will be admitted that the British 
artisan of the north, by his respect for law and order in this time 
of trial, nobly justified his admission to the franchise, two years 
later, and that in every political contest and crisis since the rise 
of democracy, the new wielders of power have shown themselves 
" conservative," in the best sense, in opposition to all revolutionary 
schemes, and to socialism in its objectionable forms. 

The wars of Great Britain since 18 15, with the exception of the 
Crimean or Russian war, noticed in connection with Turkey, have 
all been waged out of Europe, and are dealt with under the history 
of the other continents. We turn to a brief account of affairs in 
Ireland during the period. After years of agitation, conducted by 
the famous Daniel O'Connell through the " Catholic Association," 
the last political disabilities of the Catholics were removed by the 
Emancipation Act of 1829, which admitted them to both Houses 
of Parliament and to all civil offices except those of Regent, Viceroy 
of Ireland, Lord Chancellor of England, and Lord Chancellor of 



Great Britain and Ireland 587 

Ireland. In 1867 the Chancellorship of Ireland was thrown open 
to Catholics, and that post was held for a time by Lord O'Hagan. 
We may note the almost complete disappearance of the element 
of bigotry as regards appointment to high office in the state in the 
Indian viceroyship (1880 to 1884) of the marquis of Ripon, and 
the tenure at the present time of the post of Lord Chief-Justice 
of England by Lord Russell. 

The attempts made for the repeal of the Union Act, and the 
establishment of a separate parliament for Ireland, have spread over 
a period of nearly 60 years. In 1841 O'Connell conducted a 
movement which ended in his conviction for sedition, the reversal 
of the sentence by the House of Lords, the loss of his influence 
through his strong opposition to violent measures, and his death 
abroad in 1847. In 1843 the "Young Ireland" party, aiming at 
the use of physical force for the repeal of the Union, and for the 
establishment of Irish independence of Great Britain, was headed 
by Charles Duffy, John Mitchel, Thomas Meagher, and Smith 
O'Brien, the last three of whom were sentenced to transportation 
beyond the seas, and the movement collapsed after a vain attempt 
at rebellion in 1848. Ten years later a movement began with 
secret associations formed among men of the lower class, and the 
" Fenian Brotherhood," whose name was derived from the Irish 
title of the old national militia, was founded by Irishmen in the 
United States in 1862. The close of the American Civil War 
brought across the Atlantic large numbers of trained Irish soldiers 
disbanded from the Federal forces, and risings in Ireland were 
planned. All attempts at insurrection were quelled, in 1865 and 
in the two following years, by the troops and by the fine body 
of armed police called the Irish Constabulary. The wretched rebels 
who hated England and all her ways and works then resorted to 
the murderous violence of explosions of gunpowder and, especially, 
of dynamite, in public places — at Clerkenwell Prison, in London, 
in 1867, and in 1883 to 1885 at Glasgow and in London, including 
serious outrages at the House of Commons and the Tower. Nearly 
all these miscreants were ultimately caught and sentenced to penal 
servitude. 

The " Home Rule " struggle for a separate parliament for Irish 
affairs, the last phase of Irish political history, conducted in the 
House of Commons by the legitimate means of argument and 
discussion, and, at a later period, in attempts to force the hand of 
British members through systematic obstruction of business, began 



588 A History of the World 

with the founding, in 1873, of the "Home Rule League" led 
by Mr. Isaac Butt. In 1874 about 60 Irish members, or three- 
fifths of the whole number of representatives in the Commons, were 
returned as " Home Rulers." In 1877 Mr. Parnell became the 
head, in the House of Commons, of the " obstruction " party, and 
in 1880 he led a very large majority of Irish members pledged 
to the cause. A separate body of men, of desperate character, 
in close connection with Irish foes of England in the United 
States, obtaining funds from that source, and known as the 
" Invincibles," aimed at Irish independence through terrorism, and 
in May, 1882, these men perpetrated one of the worst crimes of 
modern days in stabbing to death, in daylight, in full view of 
the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Mr. Burke, an Under- 
Secretary, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, new " Chief-Secretary 
for Ireland," who had only that day landed to assume his duties. 
This monstrous deed was promptly disavowed by Mr. Parnell 
and his colleagues, but the Home Rule cause was undoubtedly 
injured thereby. The skill of the Irish police was evinced by the 
capture, within a few months, of all the principals and many 
" aiders and abettors " in the crime, five of whom were hanged, 
three sentenced to penal servitude for life, and others to various 
terms. 

In 1885 the Irish Home Rule members in the Commons 
numbered 86, and in the following year Mr. Gladstone's Bill was 
defeated there by a majority of 30, after causing a rupture in the 
Liberal party, and the secession of some of its most prominent 
members, including Mr. John Bright, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, 
Mr. Goschen, Sir Henry (Lord) James, Lord Hartington (duke 
of Devonshire), the duke of Argyle, and Lord Selborne. Mr. 
Gladstone was followed, in supporting Home Rule, by Sir William 
Harcourt, Mr. John Morley, Earl Spencer, Earl Granville, Sir Charles 
(now Lord) Russell, the earl of Rosebery, the earl of Aberdeen, 
and Sir George Trevelyan. The whole matter was shelved for 
six years, from 1886 to 1892, under the Conservative government 
headed by Lord Salisbury. Meanwhile, the Home Rule cause 
was seriously injured by the conduct of Mr. Parnell, who in 1890 
became the defendant in a divorce-suit promoted by his former 
friend Captain O'Shea. A special tribunal of three judges, known 
as the "Parnell Commission," sat for 128 days in the latter part of 
1888 and in 1889, to do justice between the Irish leader and his 
Parliamentary supporters, on the one hand, and the Times news- 



Great Britain and Ireland 589 

paper, on the subject of the famous articles Parnellisrn and Crime, 
in which Mr. Parnell and his Irish colleagues were charged with 
direct support and full knowledge of the murderous conspiracies 
and outrages in connection with Irish independence and the Irish 
land-system. A wretched man named Richard Pigott was shown, 
on his own confession, to have misled the managers of the Times by 
gross forgeries and fraud, and on March 10th, tracked to Madrid 
by detectives, he ended an infamous life by self-murder with a 
revolver. The case against Mr. Parnell and his friends was thus, 
in its chief points, destroyed. The report of the judges, laid before 
Parliament in February, 1890, acquitted them of the most serious 
charges, but condemned them of entering into a conspiracy to 
promote an agrarian agitation, by a system of coercion and intimida- 
tion, against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of 
ridding Ireland of the landlords. It was held to be not proved 
that they had afforded aid to notorious criminals or associated 
intimately with such persons. The judges found, however, that 
they had, for political objects, invited and received aid in money 
from a certain Patrick Ford, a known "dynamiter," connected with 
an association of desperate men called the Clan-na-Gael. The 
general effect of this report upon the public mind in Great Britain 
was detrimental to the Home Rule cause, and this bad effect was 
intensified by Mr. Parnell's immoral conduct on the social side. 
It thus came to pass that the efforts of a very able tactician and 
parliamentary chief were to a large extent neutralised. In a twelve- 
years' conflict he had forced the Home Rule question to the front, 
and had secured the adhesion of a large majority of Liberals and 
of their leader, Mr. Gladstone, only to pull down with his own hands 
the imposing fabric which he had reared. In the general election 
of 1892 that great statesman obtained a majority, including his 
Irish supporters, of nearly 40 in favour of a separate Parliament 
for Ireland, and in 1893, after a very long struggle, his Bill was 
carried through the Commons by a majority, on the third reading, 
of 36. A large majority of English, as distinct from Scottish, Irish, 
and Welsh members, voted against the Bill, and this fact enabled 
the Lords to reject the measure by the enormous majority of 419 
to 41. The general election of July, 1895, gave a very large 
"Unionist" majority to Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister, and 
shelved the cause of " repeal of the Union," perhaps for ever. 

The Irish land-question has been previously alluded to in these 
pages. Very complex in details, which present, during the 19th 



590 A History of the World 

century, a chequered scene of crime, tumult, coercion, agitation, intimi- 
dation, and tribulation, it is simple enough in origin and principle. 
We have seen that the agrarian difficulty had its rise in conquest and 
confiscation. The people, robbed of proprietary rights in the soil, 
have never ceased to regard that soil as justly theirs, and to resent the 
payment of rent as legalised spoliation. Native and alien landlords 
and their agents, in the latter half of the 18th and during most of the 
19th century, were the objects of agitation, opposition, outrage, and 
murder conducted by secret societies formed among the peasantry — 
" Whiteboys," " Ri'ubonmen," and the like. Countless "Coercion 
Acts " were from time to time passed in order to deal with disorder 
and veiled rebellion. It was Ireland's misfortune that the lack 
of coal, capital, and enterprise had brought nearly all the people, 
save in the province of Ulster, into a state of dependence on the 
produce of the soil, and a bad harvest has been invariably productive 
of want approaching or reaching the point of starvation. The 
country was much over-populated under the existing economical 
conditions, and the evils of the land-question were aggravated by 
the fierce competition for farms which caused a constant rise of 
rents. Non-payment of rent brought evictions, or forcible expulsion 
of tenants, from their lands and homes, and eviction was frequently 
followed by outrages perpetrated on land-agents, on succeeding 
tenants, and on all who supported the cause of the hated land- 
owners. British legislation, for many years, paid little or no heed to 
these matters, or only made things worse by strengthening the hands 
of the landlords for enforcing the rights which, to the unhappy Irish 
tillers of the soil, appeared to be deadly wrongs. Commissions 
appointed to inquire into the state of Ireland constantly, in their 
reports, made use of the words " exorbitant rents." 

At the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign the condition of 
affairs was truly portentous. Independent foreign observers — 
French, German, Italian — declared the misery of the Irish peasant 
to be beyond all example in modern Europe. The Times and 
the Quarterly Review, very powerful organs of English opinion as 
far as possible removed from revolutionary views, denounced the 
" landlordism " of Ireland in the strongest terms of bitter indignation. 
Nature herself at last took the matter in hand, and brought a fearful 
but, in some points, effectual remedy to the miseries of the country. 
In 1 84 1 the population of Ireland had reached a number exceed- 
ing 8,000,000, the bulk of whom depended for subsistence on a 
single root. The failure of the potato-crop in 1845, '846, and two 



Great Britain and Ireland 591 

following years brought the awful tragedy known as the Potato 
Famine. In spite of all British and American efforts, this slew 
at least 500,000 people through hunger and disease, had a large 
share in causing the immediate repeal of the Corn-laws, and 
started the great emigration-movement which, conveying away 
some millions of Irish, chiefly beyond the Atlantic, and in far 
smaller numbers to Australasia, relieved the country from its curse 
of over-population. Legislation had dealt with the symptoms 
instead of with the cause of the malady. Parliament maintained 
the rights of property, passed more and more Coercion Acts, and 
supported eviction. In 1849 the Encumbered Estates Act enabled 
Irish landlords or their creditors to sell estates, and a special court, 
in the course of 40 years, made the transfer to new owners of about 
one-fifth of the soil. The new landlords were even more ruthless than 
the old, and in 1870 the first real measure of relief to Irish tenants 
was passed. This first Irish Land Act of Mr. Gladstone compelled 
landlords to pay to tenants, on removal from holdings by the land- 
owner, the value of improvements, made at the tenant's cost, in the 
soil and the farm-buildings. The measure, however, failed to prevent 
the landlord from raising the rent of an improved holding, and if the 
tenant were thus driven to give notice, he had no claim to compensa- 
tion for improvements. Iniquitous landlords thwarted or evaded 
the intentions of the law, and there was a renewal of agrarian trouble 
in outrages, murders, and the acquittal of offenders, in spite of the 
clearest evidence, by sympathising juries of their fellow-countrymen. 
In 1879 the National Land League was started in Ireland, and 
strongly supported by Mr. Parnell and the Home Rulers of that 
country. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone's second Irish Land Act effected 
much good in establishing courts with power to fix a fair rental 
for tenants, payable at that standard for 15 years, during which 
period the tenant could not be evicted except for non-payment of 
rent or for breach of certain clear agreements between the land- 
owner and himself. In the following year an Arrears Act made an 
end of all debts due by tenants to landlords, on payment of only 
one year's rent. In 1885 another Act did much to further the 
cause of peasant-proprietorship in the soil by enabling the state to 
advance two-thirds, and later, the whole of the purchase-money 
to tenants, repayable over 49 years in the form of four per cent, 
interest. Many millions of pounds have been thus advanced, and 
the last state of Ireland, at the end of the 19th century, is in a 
marked degree better than the first. In spite of all troubles and 
39 



592 A History of the World 

difficulties, the country has, within the last 50 years, made a marked 
advance in material prosperity. The revenue, between 1850 and 
1888, rose from £4,500,000 to ,£7,500,000 ; the deposits and private 
balances in joint-stock banks increased, between 1852 and 1885, 
from £"10,000,000 to nearly thrice that amount. The savings-banks 
used by the poorer classes of depositors have, in a like period, 
increased the amount of deposits fourfold. In 1854 only one 
person in 132 of the whole population was a depositor in a savings- 
bank of any kind. In 1887 the proportion was about one in 28. 
A vast improvement in the dwelling-houses has also taken place, 
and for every 100 families now living in the typical Irish "mud- 
cabins" there were 700 so existing when Queen Victoria came to 
the throne. In 1841 more than half the population over five years 
of age could not read and write ; 40 years later, only one-quarter 
were in that condition. 

The province of Ulster, largely differing from the rest of the 
country in religious faith and in the race and character of the people, 
has been disturbed and disgraced only by occasional outbreaks of 
hostility, "religious riots," between Catholics and Protestants. As 
regards the land-question, an unwritten law styled the " Ulster 
custom " afforded freedom of sale for the goodwill of a holding and 
the practical fixity of tenure so desirable for skilled and industrious 
farmers. In the most flourishing part of Ireland, the county of 
Antrim, manufacturing industry has had great success owing to 
capital, energy, and the proximity of cheap and abundant fuel in the 
Cumberland and Lancashire coal-fields. The great town of Belfast, 
now renowned for ship-building, has also supplied employment to 
large numbers of people in flax-spinning, linen-weaving, rope-making, 
and other trades. We leave this subject by recording the Act of 
1869 for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant 
Church in Ireland — a measure which ended a grievance of Irish 
Catholics by removing Irish prelates from the House of Lords and 
employing a part of the superfluous revenues of the Church for the 
relief of Irish suffering in various forms. 

In Scotland, the period under review has witnessed a great 
growth of population and prosperity, and the only event needing 
notice here is the noble display of public spirit which caused the 
formation of the "Free Church" in 1843. This step was a revolt 
of a large number of Presbyterian ministers and laymen against the 
patronage-system which forced new ministers on congregations who 
objected to their appointment. The " General Assembly," by its 



Great Britain and Ireland — France 593 

Veto Act of 1834, had forbidden the appointment of a minister to 
any parish against the will of a majority of male Church-members. 
The civil law, in certain cases, enforced compliance with the wishes 
of lay-patrons, and a great secession from the established Presby- 
terian Church was the result. Nearly 500 ministers, headed by 
Dr. Welsh, the " Moderator " of the Assembly, and by the great 
orator, the accomplished Dr. Chalmers, resigned their livings and 
threw themselves for subsistence on the voluntary support of laymen 
who might approve their conduct. A grand response was made to 
this heroic appeal of conscientious men, and large sums of money 
soon supplied a sustentation-fund for ministers ; erected hundreds 
of new churches and " manses " ; established new theological 
colleges, and launched on its career the " Free Church " which has 
produced some of Scotland's ablest and most eloquent divines. 

In the Anglican Church the chief event of the 19th century has 
been the "Oxford Movement" or "Anglican revival" connected 
with the names and due to the efforts of Pusey, Newman, Keble, 
and other Oxford scholars. The Tracts for the Times, published 
between 1833 and 1841, caused the supporters of the movement 
to be styled " Tractarians " ; another popular name was that of 
" Puseyites." Many of these reformers, men of the school of Arch- 
bishop Laud in Stuart times, ended by going over to the Roman 
communion, the most notable examples being those of the men 
who became Cardinals Newman and Manning. The modern " High 
Church " or " Ritualistic " section of Anglicans now includes the 
large majority of the clergy, and a permanent result of the revival 
has been a greater degree of devotion to practical and parochial 
work, combined with a vast improvement in reverence of ritual, 
church-music, and church architecture. Nonconformist activity has, 
in a large measure, kept pace with the Church in these matters, 
apart from any changes of ritual. 

Chapter III. — France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial 

Rule. 

In the reign of the insignificant Louis XVIII. (1815-1824), who, 
as the Comte de Provence, had steadily injured the cause of his 
brother, Louis XVI., by opposing every salutary measure, a reactionary 
course was adopted, under the influence of the restored nobles and 
priests, against the imperialist (Napoleonic), republican, and Protestant 
sections of French society. A " White Terror " arose in the provinces, 



594 A History of the World 

and roving bands of assassins put to death hundreds of " heretics " 
and holders of republican principles. In 1823 a French army 
entered Spain and, supporting the cause of the restored Ferdinand VII., 
enabled that perjured monarch to violate the new constitution and 
murder subjects who claimed the fulfilment of his pledges. Great 
discontent arose in France, and secret societies were formed to 
counteract the policy of an ultra-royalist ministry and chamber of 
deputies. Under Louis XVIII. 's brother and successor, Charles X. 
( 1 824-1 830), matters went from bad to worse in the direction of 
despotism. A liberal party of influential men, favouring a system 
of monarchy based on the support of the bourgeoisie or middle classes, 
began to arise. The new sovereign, devoted to the Jesuits and the 
clerical party, increased his unpopularity by disbanding the National 
Guard in 1827. In the following year a Chamber with a liberal 
majority was elected, and the foolish king, a typical Bourbon, sealed 
his fate when, in the face of this fact, he called to his councils an 
ultra-royalist and reactionary in the feeble-minded Prince de Polignac. 
This minister persuaded his master, after the election of a Chamber 
with an increased liberal majority, to issue certain "ordinances" 
of an insane character, declaring the recent elections to be illegal ; 
restricting the suffrage, by a new electoral system, 10 the large land- 
owners ; and forbidding any newspaper or pamphlet to appear 
without royal sanction. The people of Paris, in the famous " three 
days" of the "Revolution of July" (27th-2oth), rushed to arms, 
erected barricades, defeated the troops, captured the Hotel de Ville 
and the Louvre, drove the king into exile, made Lafayette, whom we 
saw in the great Revolution, commander of the National Guard, 
and set up a "provisional government." This prompt and effective 
assertion of the cause of freedom was sullied by no cruelties on the 
victorious side. The king was at their mercy, and they let him go. 
The ministers who had signed the " ordinances " were only punished, 
after a lawful trial, with imprisonment. Property was respected ; the 
fundamental laws of the country were revered. The mild character 
of the second French Revolution, one promoted by men who had 
enjoyed some blessings of freedom, was a triumphant proof of the 
proposition that the violence of such an armed uprising against 
misrule is proportioned to the degree of misgovernment which 
produces it. 

The July Revolution made an end of the older Bourbon line 
as rulers in France, and the younger branch came to a new 
constitutional throne in the person of Louis Philippe I. (1830-1848), 



France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 595 

duke of Orleans, son of the Philippe Egalite (due d'Orle'ans) of 
the first Revolution, who voted for the death of Louis XVI., and 
himself died by the guillotine in November, 1793. The new " King 
of the French," le roi bourgeois, or " middle-class king," as he was 
styled, the chosen of the French people, was a man of varied 
experience, in a life of exile, as a tutor in Switzerland, a traveller 
over Europe and the United States, a refugee in England. The 
" citizen-king " was fondly believed to be a most sagacious man, 
and he began well by abandoning all claim to " divine right " ; 
abolishing censorship of the Press ; confining legislation to the two 
Chambers ("Deputies" and Senate), and generally recognising 
constitutional forms. His opponents were found among the ultra- 
royalists and the republicans, and among the latter party there soon 
arose agitation for an extension of the franchise, which was limited 
to the aristocracy of wealth and their supporters. The industry and 
wealth of the country grew, and the sovereign retained his hold 
of the middle classes whose interests he favoured to the exclusion 
of the peasantry and artisans. There was gross political and even 
judicial corruption, and the policy of France was marked by much 
unwisdom in the attempts to win glory by very sanguinary and costly 
warfare in Algeria ; in perfidious treatment of the Spanish queen 
with the hope of seeing a French prince dominant beyond the 
Pyrenees ; in the adoption of a hostile tone towards Great Britain ; 
and in the courting of the Napoleonic party by the bringing of their 
hero's remains, in 1840, to French soil. Many attempts were made 
on the king's life, and, under the influence of fear and of foolish 
ministers, he caused the enactment of repressive laws, tampered with 
trial by jury, and made the middle-class monarchy, the bourgeois 
predominance, yearly more hateful to the men of progress and the 
republican party. The end came in February, 1848, when the king, 
with his minister Guizot, a steady opponent of the advanced party, 
forbade the holding of a series of banquets in favour of electoral 
reform. On February 22nd the mob of Paris rose in arms, assisted 
by the defection of some of the troops of the line, and by the active 
aid or the complicity of the municipal police and the National 
Guard. The king, in disguise, and under the name of " Mr. Smith," 
made his escape to England with the queen, the estimable Marie 
Amelie, daughter of Ferdinand I. of Naples, and ended his life at 
Claremont in August, 1850. 

The Second French Republic arose, and in June a terrible 
contest in the streets of Paris, with the loss of many thousands of 



59^ A History of the World 

lives, ensued between the moderate republican party and the 
socialistic section, the " Reds " or extreme republicans. The troops 
and the National Guard subdued the insurrection of the socialists, 
and in December, 1848, a Napoleon came again to the front, as 
President of the Republic, elected by over 5,500,000 of votes 
taken at a plebiscite, or election by universal suffrage, against about 
1,500,000 given to the genuine republican, General Cavaignac, an 
Algerian soldier who had distinguished himself by skill, courage, 
and clemency in and after the outbreak of June, and was a man 
of the highest honour. The new head of affairs was, like Louis 
Philippe, a man of varied experience before he attained to supreme 
power. Nephew of the great emperor, as son of Louis Bonaparte, 
king of Holland, Louis Napoleon, born at Paris in 1808, became in 
1832, by the death of Napoleon's only son (the due de Reichstadt) 
and of his own elder brothers, head of the house of Corsican 
upstarts. Educated in Switzerland and Germany, he displayed in 
manhood a complex character, involving considerable intelligence ; 
dreamy, philosophic indefiniteness of thought; ambition, fatalism, 
irresolution and hesitation capable of being roused to decision 
and courage at critical junctures ; absence of all political morality ; 
kindliness, gratitude to all who served him in his days of ill-fortune. 
Outlawed from France under the Bourbons, he made two absurd 
attempts, in 1836 and in 1840, to arouse French troops against 
Louis Philippe, and he passed over five years, until May, 1846, as 
a prisoner in the fortress of Ham, on the Somme. Making his 
escape, he returned to England, where he was already well known 
in certain circles of London society, and on December 20 h, 1848, 
he took the oath of allegiance to the French Republic. A gang of 
adventurers of the most unscrupulous kind, mere creatures of prey — 
De Moray, Maupas, Fiolin (afterwards Due de Persigny), St. Arnaud, 
and others — had resolved to use the " nephew of his uncle " in 
their own sordid interests, and the nephew, full of thoughts of 
" Csesarism," of a display of modern imperial democracy, was 
willing to be so used. 

The first clear evidence of treachery to true republican principles 
was given in the suppression, by a French army, in league with 
monarchical Austria and a detestable tyrant at Naples, of the 
republican movement in Rome. The army, especially the strong 
garrison of Paris, was won over by systematic corruption, in- 
cluding gross debauchery. " Napoleonists" were placed in all 
prominent military and civil posts; the provincial towns were 



France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 597 

courted in frequent presidential visits ; the people were cajoled 
by acts of clemency and by largesses of various kinds. The 
better part — in numbers, patriotic spirit, and intelligence — of the 
Assembly well understood what was going on, and the President 
and his creatures laid their plans against them. On December 2nd 
1 85 1, the infamous Coup d'Etat, one of the greatest crimes of 
modern days, laid French liberty prostrate. The republican and 
Orleanist leaders — Cavaignac, Changarnier, Thiers, Victor Hugo, 
and many more — were seized at dead of night. Attempts at 
resistance, in the streets of the capital, were quelled, and society 
overawed, by the ruthless slaughter of men, women, and children. 
The " constitution " was annulled ; political opponents were exiled 
or transported to Cayenne, the French penal colony in Guiana. 
Perjured and steeped in blood, Louis Napoleon, elected by another 
plebiscite largely influenced by terrorism and deceit, became President 
for ten years, and inaugurated his new monarchical rule by con- 
fiscating the "appanages," or Bourbon crown-lands, of the Orleanist 
princes, and compelling them to sell their whole, private property 
in French land. On December 2nd, 1852, the edifice of new 
Napoleonic power was crowned by the assumption of imperial 
sway, and " Napoleon III., Emperor ,of the French," began to 
reign under the sanction of another plebiscite, said to have afforded 
nearly 8,000,000 of votes. The public press was put under restraint, 
and a system of absolute rule was set up under the mask of 
a Senate and Legislative Body possessing no real parliamentary 
powers. 

The Second Empire continued for nearly 18 years. Submission 
to a man who, under the protection of a devoted army and of 
a rigorous police, posed as the maintainer of law and order, was 
accorded by a generation of Frenchmen composed of men and 
women who knew nothing, by personal experience, of the miseries 
as well as the glories of the first Empire, and by many lovers 
of order and good administration who were ready to welcome the 
representative of the family whose founder's best work had survived 
him in admirable systems of law and public education, and in 
military institutions. Recognised by the European powers, the 
emperor declared his resolve to maintain peace, a pledge violated, 
as we shall see, with regard to Russia, Austria, and Mexico, prior 
to the last wanton and disastrous outbreak of French militarism. 
The country, enjoying peace at home, had a great increaes of 
material prosperity. The skill and taste of French artisans made 



598 A History of the World 

wealth in manufactures ; the dogged industry of French peasants, 
tilling their own soil, created riches from the ground, and their 
thrift hoarded the returns for investment in the government-loans 
raised to meet a lavish expenditure on public works, or in the 
railways which were largely developed, to the benefit of trade and 
commerce, during the reign. All that material progress can do to 
justify the seizure of supreme power was effected. The masons 
and other building craftsmen of Paris were kept employed, at 
good wages, in the reconstruction of the city under the super- 
intendence of the eminently energetic — and expensive — Baron 
Haussmann, " Pre'fet of the Seine," at a cost of ^35,000,000 sterling 
for the widening of streets, the laying out of new boulevards and 
parks, the construction of sewers, barracks, and bridges. Imperialism 
made a brilliant show at home in a court headed by the lovely and 
extravagant empress, the Spanish lady Eugenie de Montijo, countess 
of «Teba, and the birth of a prince imperial in March, 1856, was 
hailed with rapture by the believers in the new empire. In the 
European system, an imposing effect was produced by success in 
land-warfare ; by the great increase of the national steam-navy, 
and by the completion of the vast harbour and fortifications at 
Cherbourg which Napoleon I. had begun. Alliance with Great 
Britain against Russia and in Chinese affairs added to the "prestige " 
of the new dynasty, and the vindication, to some extent, of 
Italian freedom against Austria, and the armed protection afforded 
to the Pope against Italian liberalism, conciliated at once the 
champions of the principle of " nationalities," and the devotees of 
the Catholic Church. 

The downfall was due to the shock given to the self-conceit 
of French militarism by the brilliant success of Prussia, in 1866, 
in war against Austria, and by the general advance of the leading 
state of Germany under the control, as Chancellor, of the renowned 
von Bismarck, who had again and again fooled and foiled, in the 
field of diplomatic contests, the emperor Napoleon. French 
" Chauvinism " (the " Jingoism " of the British Isles), a name 
derived from that of Chauvin, a fiery young recruit in a modern 
French comedy, had been galled by the Prussian minister's blunt 
refusal to give territorial " compensation " to France in the Rhine- 
country after Prussia's great success in Germany, and any pretext 
for war was sure of a welcome in Paris. The occasion was the 
offer of the Spanish throne to the Prince of Hohenzollern, a young 
man not in the reigning line of that House, as far as Prussia was 



France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 599 

concerned, but French susceptibility was aggrieved by his accept- 
ance, and remonstrance was met by his withdrawal at the Prussian 
king's request. This was followed by the really insolent demand 
that the Prussian sovereign should undertake never to permit the 
Hohenzollern candidacy for the Spanish crown to be renewed. 
King William, then a visitor at Ems, near Coblenz, declined to 
discuss this matter with the French ambassador Benedetti, who 
sought to " interview " him on the public parade. We now know, 
from Bismarck's own cynical confession, that this incident was 
reported to and published in the Prussian newspapers in a form, 
prepared by himself, which was expressly framed as likely to irritate 
the French, and provoke the outbreak of war for which he knew 
Germany to be well prepared. On the other hand, it is certain 
that the French government was meditating war from the fact that, 
in the spring of 1870, their agents had been purchasing corn and 
forage in the southern English markets, and a flotilla had been 
secretly gathering in the northern French ports for the transport 
of men and horses, presumably to the north coast of Germany, 
in case of need. The provocation given by Bismarck was instantly 
taken up, and the French government declared war on July 15th. 
The whole of northern Germany rose as one man, with the 
alliance of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, and Baden, and the 
French hope of aid from, or, at least, of neutrality in, those states 
was baffled. Stern, quiet resolution, along with a complete state 
of preparation for war, on the east of the Rhine, was confronted 
with premature boasting, excited yells of A Berlin, and a military 
state of disorganisation which quickly gave the lie to the French 
minister of war, Marshal Leboeuf's statement, at the council where 
war was decided on, that " all was ready, even to the last button on 
the soldier's gaiters." 

A detailed account of this great struggle, with its succession 
of astounding events, may be sought in any of the special works 
devoted to its history. It has no parallel in mediaeval or modern 
times for the numbers of men engaged, along with the swiftness 
and completeness of success attained by the victors, a success due 
to superiority of force in well-trained troops, to better organisation, 
and to the skill of the German chief of the staff, von Moltke, 
one of the greatest strategists of all time. The " Commentaries " 
of Napoleon I. were the handbook of military study in the 
German staff; the French generals seemed to be wholly ignorant of 
his principles or incapable of applying them. The French emperor 



600 A History of the World 

accompanied his men into the field, and quickly found his fears as 
to the real state of the army well founded. The force under arms 
was less than 250,000, or 100,000 below the numbers on paper. 
Mismanagement, and embezzlement of funds, the work of years, 
had left the actual numbers raised and disciplined short, to that 
extent, of those voted, and the arsenals and storehouses were lacking 
in supplies of all kinds. The Germans took the field, within a 
fortnight, with about 400,000 men, crossed the frontier, and at once 
assumed the offensive. On August 4th a French advance-post of 
9,000 men was crushed at Weissenburg. Two days later their right 
wing (45,000 men) was broken to pieces, under MacMahon, at 
Worth, and at Forbach, with the storming of the Spicheren heights, 
another army was driven back in rout upon Metz. The emperor 
retired with MacMahon to Chalons-sur-Marne, where a new army 
was being formed from the remnants of the force defeated at 
Worth and from the newly raised Mobiles. Bazaine, intending 
retreat on Paris with his army of 140,000 men, including the imperial 
guard, was finally shut up within the Metz circle of forts and the 
town, after the three great battles of Courcehes (or Colombey- 
Nouilly) on August 14th, Vionville (or Mars-la-Tour, or Rezonville, 
from other villages on the scene of action), and Gravelotte (or St. 
Privat), the last two of which were fought on August 16th and 18th. 
The next step was the adventurous and fatal attempt, prompted by 
political considerations as to the effect in Paris of the emperor's 
return thither as a defeated man, leaving Bazaine invested, made 
by the army under MacMahon and Louis Napoleon to come down 
upon Metz from the north, by way of Rheims, Mezieres, and 
Thionville, and extricate Bazaine by an attack on the rear of the 
investing army. Von Moltke's strategy foiled this by a change of 
direction given to the Crown Prince's army, then on the march for 
Paris, and by the formation of a new force, under the Crown Prince 
of Saxony, which went, by Verdun, down the valley of the Meuse, 
towards the Belgian frontier. By these two armies, the French, 
defeated by the Prussian prince at Beaumont on August 30th, and 
by the Saxon prince at Mouzon on the same day, were finally 
surrounded and utterly beaten at Sedan on September 1st, and 
compelled to surrender on the following day as prisoners of war. 
This greatest capitulation, up to that date, in the history of modern 
warfare, sent the emperor, MacMahon (severely wounded early 
in the day), and 100,000 men in captivity to Germany. The 
emperor, dethroned two days later, on September 4th, by a 



France: the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 60 1 

revolution in Paris, which founded the Third Republic, was a 
prisoner at Wilhelmshohe, three miles from Cassel, capital of Hesse- 
Nassau, until the close of the war, when he joined his wife and son 
in England, dying at Camden Place, Chislehurst, in Kent, in 
January, 1873. 

With the exception of a single army-corps under General Vinoy, 
the whole regular (imperial) army of France was by this time in 
captivity, or shut up without hope of rescue in Metz, Strasbourg, 
and many other fortresses in the north and east. The people of 
France then took up the cause, and more than 1,000,000 fresh men 
were raised and organised under the direction of Gambetta, a native 
of the south of France, of Genoese-Jewish origin, minister of the 
interior in the new republican government, a man of marvellous 
energy and resolution. The whole nation was stirred by his 
appeals, and the republican troops, by a determined and prolonged, 
however vain, resistance to the German victors, redeemed the fame 
of the country whose interests had been sacrificed to the incapacity, 
if not the treachery and corruption, of imperialism. The whole 
contest now became a struggle for Paris, invested on September 
19th, with its continuous line of bastions and trenches, or enceinte, 
and its 16 detached forts on the outside, by the armies of the Crown 
Princes of Prussia and Saxony, over 200,000 men. The defenders 
included about 85,000 trained fighters — the garrison, Vinoy's corps, 
sailors and marines — and over 300,000 of the guard-mobile and 
national guard of Paris, and mobile-guards from the provinces. The 
siege of over four months was one beyond all example in history, 
one whereby a city containing 2,000,000 of persons was cut off from 
all communication with the outer world except by permission of 
the investing force, and by the "balloon-post" and "pigeon-post." 
Gambetta, quitting the capital by balloon, made his way to Tours, 
and thence, as the area of German conquest was enlarged, to 
Bordeaux, from which places he directed the operations undertaken 
for the raising of the siege. The German line of communication 
with the frontier on the east was cleared by the surrender, on 
September 23rd and 28th, of the fortresses of Toul and Strasbourg, 
after severe bombardment, and many other places were given up 
after bombardment or blockade. The attention of the whole 
civilised world was concentrated on the siege of Paris and the 
efforts made for its relief from the outside. The operations were 
conducted, in two instances, with great ability and energy by 
French commanders, Chanzy in the south-west, and Faidherbe in 



602 A History of the World 

the north, but all efforts failed against von Moltke's skill, well 
backed by intelligence in his subordinate commanders and by 
admirable discipline and courage in the troops. The surrender 
of Metz, on October 28th, by the treacherous Bazaine, who was in 
league with the exiled empress for the preservation of his great force 
with a view to an imperial restoration, was a capitulation far exceed- 
ing even that of Sedan. On that memorable day 3 field-marshals, 
66 generals of army-corps, divisions, and brigades, about 6,000 
officers, and 170,000 men, became prisoners of war. 

A force of over 170,000 Germans was thus set free, after a 
deduction as garrison of the captured fortress, for operations against 
the French relieving armies. A great force had been gathered on 
the line of the Loire, and a Bavarian army, immensely outnumbered, 
had been defeated in several engagements, retiring in good order. 
The surrender of Metz sent Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, 
one of the ablest generals, to the scene of action near Orleans, with 
70,000 men, and he speedily, with some help from the army round 
Paris, broke up the army of the Loire, and retook Orleans on 
December 4th. Sorties from Paris, made in great force, failed to 
break through the German lines of investment, and the French army 
of the north was driven back within the network of fortresses on 
the Belgian frontier. Paris was drawing near to the end of her 
supplies of food, and the able French commander Chanzy, in charge 
of forces near Orleans, resisted with great skill and courage, for a 
fortnight, all attempts to force him away ; by December 17th, how- 
ever, he was driven back to Le Mans. The crisis was at hand, and 
the German army was largely reinforced to meet the last desperate 
efforts of their foe. On the north, Rouen, Amiens, and Dieppe had 
been occupied by the invaders, and Faidherbe, fighting an indecisive 
battle at Bapaume early in January, 187 1, was utterly defeated, a 
few days later, at St. Quentin. Chanzy, advancing from Le Mans, 
was routed on January 10th and nth, and that town was taken, 
on the following day, with 20,000 men, and large supplies of food, 
arms, and ammunition. This defeat ended all hope for Paris from 
the south and west. A force of 100,000 men, under General 
Bourbaki, formerly commander of the imperial guard, was used 
to strike at the German communications to the east, first attacking 
von Werder, who was besieging the great fortress of Belfort, at 
the southern end of the Vosges. Garibaldi and his son, heading 
French and Italian volunteers, had won some small successes over 
the Germans near Dijon, and Bourbaki hoped to master the line 



France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 603 

from Strasbourg to Paris. The strategical skill and promptitude 
of von Moltke wrecked the whole plan. On hearing of Bourbaki's 
move eastwards from Bourges, he formed a fresh army of 50,000 
men, and sent them at the utmost speed across the country to strike 
at Bourbaki's flank and rear. That hapless man, defeated, about 
the middle of January, in a three-days' contest near Belfort, and 
driven under the guns of Besancon, was smitten with dismay on 
the appearance of the new foe, lost his head, and attempted suicide. 
His army, shoeless and starving amidst deep snow, was driven in 
detached bodies over the Swiss frontier, where they laid down 
their arms to the number of 80,000 men. On January 28th the 
French capital, starved out, surrendered to the German forces. 
There were fiery and determined, not to say reckless, spirits among 
the French people, including the brave Gambetta, who wished 
to continue the struggle " to the bitter end," but the vast majority 
of a national assembly gathered at Bordeaux voted for peace, and 
the Treaty of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, signed on May ioth, 187 1, 
concluded the war with the cession to Germany of the whole of 
Alsace, except the fortress of Belfort and its district, and of the fifth 
part of Lorraine, including Metz and Thionville, and the payment 
of a war-indemnity of five milliards (5,000,000,000) of francs, or 
^200,000,000 sterling, within three years, in addition to the 
ransom paid by the city of Paris on surrender — 200,000,000 francs, 
or ;£8, 000,000 sterling. The whole cost to France, direct and 
indirect, of this great war must have been at least ^600,000,000 
sterling. Germany had her western frontier secured by possession 
of Metz and Strasbourg, which have been further fortified, and her 
national pride was also gratified in the recovery of territory and 
towns wrested from her, by fraud or force, in the days of the 
French kings Henry II., Louis XIV., and Louis XV. 

Unhappy France had not seen the end of her woes in the 
surrender of Paris. During the siege, a socialistic element had 
given some trouble and caused some disorder, and these " Red 
Republicans," working-men led by those who desired autonomy or 
independence for the capital through its " Commune " or municipal- 
ity, and aimed at making France consist of a federation of municipal 
republics, seized on power in Paris after the capitulation. The 
movement is not to be confounded with " communism," or the 
social system based on community of property. The " Com- 
munists " of Paris, in the former sense, had become possessed 
of several hundred cannon and mitrailleuses, and, having already 



604 A History of the World 

abundance of rifles and ammunition from the part which they 
had taken in defence of the city, they converted the north-eastern 
districts, Montmartre and Belleville, into strong fortresses, and rose 
in arms on March 18th. A fearful civil war, with a reign of terror 
inside Paris, ensued. German forces, holding territory near the 
capital as security for the payment of the indemnity, of course 
observed a strict neutrality. The regular forces of the republic, 
hundreds of thousands of men who had returned from captivity 
in Germany, represented the cause of law and order, and a powerful 
army, under MacMahon, had its headquarters at Versailles, the seat 
of the government headed by M. Thiers, a literary man of great 
eminence ; a thorough, if in some respects a misguided, patriot ; 
an able orator ; a former chief minister of Louis Philippe ; now 
elected President of the French Republic. The Parisian rebels 
murdered two generals, despoiled the churches, exacted large sums 
of money from the Bank of France, and arrested the archbishop of 
Paris (Monseigneur Darboy) and many priests as " hostages." They 
were masters of several outside forts, and the government-troops, 
or Versaillists, had to undertake a regular siege of the capital. The 
place was bombarded from the old German lines, and by the great 
fortress of Mont Valerien, and the " Commune," mad with rage, 
destroyed the house of Thiers and overthrew the great column in 
the Place Vendome, a monument of the victories of Napoleon I., 
covered with bronze made from cannon taken by his troops. On 
May 21st (Sunday) the Versailles soldiers effected an entry at a 
point left unguarded, and on the following day the storming of 
Paris by Frenchmen was steadily progressing. With horrible 
slaughter, the work went on from day to day, and barricade-fighting 
took place in the heart of the city. In the fury of despair, as the 
inevitable end drew near under the incessant efforts of disciplined 
troops skilfully led, the " Reds " endeavoured to destroy by fire the 
city which they could not hold, and some government buildings, 
with the Tuileries, a part of the Palais Royal, the Hotel de Ville, 
the library of the Louvre, and other important edifices, perished in 
the flames. Notre Dame was just saved by the inrush of victorious 
Versaillists as a light was being applied to the choir-stalls smeared 
with petroleum. On May 28th the victory of order was complete, 
after many thousands of insurgents had perished, the archbishop 
and his fellow-hostages having been deliberately murdered by 
shooting. The blood-stained, blazing capital was a scene of 
horror such as has been rarely seen in modern days, but a sharp 



France : the End of Bourbon and Imperial Rule 605 

lesson was given to the supporters of anarchy, and the peace of 
Paris and of France has not since, during nearly thirty years, been 
seriously menaced or disturbed. 

The latest history of France need not detain us long. The 
main fact is the firm establishment, against the efforts of monarchical 
agitators, of republican rule, and its continuance for a longer period 
than any form of government set up since the first downfall of the 
Bourbon monarchy at the great Revolution. The world, which 
had been astonished by the collapse of the country in the great 
war, was not less surprised by the vitality displayed in the speedy 
restoration from calamities so crushing. Among successive presi- 
dents have been Thiers, who induced the peop'e to raise money 
enough to pay off the last instalment of the vast war-indemnity, and 
so clear the territory of German troops in September, 1873 ; 
Marshal MacMahon, an excellent soldier but weak in political 
affairs, favouring monarchical intrigues during his tenure of office 
ending in January, 1879 ; M. Jules Grevy, who held office from that 
date until 1887, and was then succeeded by M. Sadi-Carnot, 
grandson of the famous minister-of-war in the Committee of Public 
Safety and the Directory and under the Consulate. In 1892 there 
were serious dynamite-outrages perpetrated by anarchists in Paris, 
and one of these detestable miscreants effected the assassination 
of President Carnot at Lyon on June 24th, 1894. The colonial 
and foreign policy of France since 18 15 will be seen under Asia, 
Africa, and America. To French capital, and to the engineering 
skill and energy of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the commercial world 
owes the construction of the Suez Canal. The same great 
engineer's undertaking at the Isthmus of Panama ended in the 
collapse of the company in 1889, after the useless expenditure of 
some ^£70,000,000 sterling, and attempts to revive and continue the 
scheme were productive of scandalous disclosures showing that 
republics as well as empires are not free from gross financial 
corruption. The French military system has been restored on a 
new basis supplying an enormous force of trained troops, and a 
continuous rivalry has existed between France and Germany in 
this matter. The great increase of naval power has caused a moie 
than corresponding activity in British shipyards, and has greatly 
contributed to the development of naval force which enabled us to 
make so magnificent a display at the Portsmouth review in 1897. 
In the early spring of 1898 the trial of the French novelist Zola for 
libel in connection with his championship of the army-officer Captain 



606 .A History of the World 

Dreyfus, condemned for treason in January, 1895, § ave a ver y 
unfavourable impression of French " militarism," as overriding not 
merely the sense of decency and propriety among civilians and 
officers, but judicial dignity and impartiality. 

Chapter IV. — Germany : Austria ; Prussia ; the New 
German Empire. 

For many years after the Congress of Vienna, Austria, under the 
rule of Francis I. (1792-1835) and his son Ferdinand I. (1835- 
1848), in political alliance with Russia and Prussia, was the leading 
state of Germany, and greatly influenced Continental affairs. Home- 
government and foreign policy alike were chiefly directed by the 
able Prince von Metternich, a clear-headed, firm man, who had 
proved himself a match for Napoleon in diplomacy. His con- 
summate art in negotiation and in intrigue, conducted with an 
ever-smiling face and winning ways, was used with great effect 
against the French emperor prior to his downfall. He was the 
steady opponent of constitutional freedom, and ever strove to repress 
any advances thereto, in speech or writing, by severe measures 
against the public press, combined agitation, and private utterance. 
The German princes, under this evil system, exhibited a horror 
of change and reform, and in 18 19 a convention of ministers at 
Karlsbad, under the presidency of Metternich, adopted resolutions 
in restraint of the press, gagging university-teachers, forbidding 
societies and political meetings, and creating a kind of inquisition 
for the discovery and punishment of democratic agitators. The 
revolution of 1830 in France had its effect upon the German party 
of progress, and risings took place in some of the smaller states. 
In Brunswick, the palace of the unpopular duke was destroyed by 
fire, and he was in much personal danger. The rulers of Saxony, 
Hanover, and Hessen-Cassel, and the new duke of Brunswick, then 
granted "constitutions" on a more or less wide basis. In 1837 
the kingdom of Hanover, which could not, under the Salic law, 
be ruled by a female sovereign, ceased to be connected with Great 
Britain on the accession of Queen Victoria, and the new ruler, 
Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland, a man of detestable character, 
restricted the new constitutional liberties, and dismissed from office 
seven distinguished professors of the University of Gottingen, 
including the two renowned brothers Grimm, for protesting against 
his tyranny. 



Austria 607 

A brief awakening came with the French outbreak of 1848. 
During a generation passed under despotic rule, the desire for 
freedom had become irrepressible, and the rulers of most of the 
smaller states, in presence of the popular feeling, showed their fear 
by taking ministers of more liberal views. The king of Bavaria 
abdicated in favour of his son, and the grand-duke of Hessen- 
Darmstadt made his son co-ruler. Austria became the arena of 
serious events. The repressive system of rule had specially affected 
some of the nationalities under her sway, and in 1846 a Polish 
insurrection had caused Cracow, made a " free state," under the 
protection of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, at the Congress of Vienna, 
to be incorporated with the empire. The troubles in Italy will be 
seen hereafter. Bohemia was clamouring for change, and Hungary 
took up arms. In March, 1848, an insurrection in Vienna overthrew 
the civil and military power, and Metternich, fleeing to England, 
vanished for ever from the scene of his long domination. The 
emperor and court took refuge in the capital of the Tyrol, leaving 
Vienna in the hands of the national guards and the armed citizens 
and students. A rising in Prague was crushed with sanguinary 
severity, but in Hungary matters, for a time, took a different and 
very serious course. The constitutional movement in that country, 
under the leadership of Francis Deak, Louis Kossuth, and other 
patriots, had become very formidable prior to the French revolution 
against Louis Philippe. Kossuth now became the leader of revolt, 
and Hungary demanded complete independence. In October 
Vienna was recaptured, after a siege of eight days, by the imperial 
troops under Field-Marshal Windischgratz, and quiet was restored 
in Austria proper on the abdication of Ferdinand in favour of his 
nephew, Francis Joseph, now (1898) in his 50th year of sovereignty. 
The Hungarians, joined by many Germans and Poles, but opposed 
by the Croatians and Transylvanians, defeated the imperial troops 
in several actions with great loss, and captured Buda-Pesth. Armies 
numbering 200,000 men were under the command of Bern and 
Dembinski, Polish generals, and of the Magyar princes Gorgei and 
Klapka, and a bold advance on Vienna, at the crisis of the struggle, 
might have overthrown the Austrian power. In his trouble, the 
new emperor appealed for help to Russia, and in May, 1849, her 
forces crossed the frontier. The Hungarian troops were now 
outnumbered, and, after a severe struggle, overpowered. Some of 
the leaders took refuge in Turkey ; Count Batthyanyi was shot ; and 
the revolt was punished by the infamous General Haynau with great 
40 



608 A History of the World 

severity in executions of leaders, imprisonments, floggings of men 
and women, and confiscations. The new constitution was abolished ; 
Transylvania and Croatia were separated from Hungary ; and the 
general struggle for freedom ended in the re-establishment of the 
former despotic system of rule, without any freedom for the press 
or trial by jury. 

Turning now to Prussia, we find that country, under the rule 
of Frederick William III. (1797-1840), making great progress in 
commercial and educational affairs. Treaties of commerce were 
made with various maritime nations ; steam-traffic on the great 
rivers was developed ; a new and excellent system of roads was 
formed; and Germany at large began to receive benefit through 
the establishment of the famous Zollverein or Customs' Union, 
which included, in 1838, 23 states. Many useless restrictions on 
trade were thus removed ; and the idea of national unity was thereby 
fostered. The leadership in this movement was due to Prussia, 
and her influence in Germany was increased. The utmost efforts 
were made, and large sums were expended, in the spread of 
education, and the established Protestant Church was newly and 
liberally endowed. On the other hand, amidst all the legislative 
and administrative activity, no provision was made for promoting 
civil and political freedom, and efforts in that direction were 
repressed on the Metternich model, with violation of the pledges 
given by the king in 18 15 for the establishment of a general 
representative government. Frederick William IV. (1840- 185 8), son 
of his predecessor, equally opposed political reform, and a crisis 
came in March, 1848, when an insurrection in Berlin caused the 
withdrawal of the troops, after some fighting, by the king's order, 
and some form of constitutional government was set up, only to 
be modified by degrees in its more valuable features. Material 
improvement went on apace, in the development of roads, railways, 
and river-navigation, and in the increase at once of educational and 
military efficiency, matters closely connected with the subsequent 
successes of Prussia in the field of battle. 

The main feature of German history in and shortly after the 
middle of the 19th century is the contest for supremacy between 
the two leading states. In 1850 Austrian jealousy of Prussian 
efforts to rally the smaller states round herself as the centre of 
authority in a new " federal state " came near to causing civil war, 
but the bold attitude adopted by the Austrian absolutist statesman 
Prince Schwarzenberg, at the famous Olmiitz conference in November 



Austria and Prussia 609 

of that year, caused the somewhat feeble and vacillating Prussian 
monarch to give way, and the influence of Austria became for a 
time supreme. A change came with the accession to the throne 
of Prussia, in 1861, of King William I., brother of the former 
sovereign, for whom he had held power as "Regent" since 1858. 
The new monarch was one who aimed not at popular progress in 
the political sense, but at Prussian aggrandisement and at German 
unity through Prussia. He was not intellectually great, but he had 
firmness of character, clear perception of fitness in the instruments 
of his policy, and unswerving fidelity in their support. Bismarck, 
one of the greatest of modern statesmen in his union of sagacity 
with stern resolution, presided over diplomatic and political affairs, 
becoming chief minister in 1862 and imperial chancellor in 1871. 
Count von Roon, minister of war, organised the military forces in 
the style whose best eulogy is found in the brilliant results. Von 
Moltke, as the wielder of the mighty weapon forged, we have 
already seen. The policy of " blood and iron," in Bismarck's words, 
as the one hope of Prussian predominance and German unity, was 
carried out with ruthless vigour, and all opposition in the parliament 
was met by dissolutions of the house of representatives, and, on the 
return of a still larger majority of opponents, by dispensing with 
the passage of money-bills as a preliminary to taxation for army 
expenditure. In 1863 Austria received a rebuff in Prussia's refusal 
to attend a congress of German princes at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, 
for the purpose of deliberating on a political reorganisatk n of 
Germany. 

Matters were brought to a crisis between the two Powers after 
the war of 1864, in which their combined forces speedily crushed 
those of Denmark, and deprived ih it country of all rights in 
Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The victors quarrelled con- 
cerning the spoils, and in 1866 the Austro-Prussian War, one of 
the briefest on record, broke out. Known as the " Seven Weeks' 
War," its actual operations were confined to one month, from 
June 22nd to July 22nd. In this sharp, short, and decisive struggle 
the allies of Prussia were Italy, whose share in the war will be 
seen hereafter, and the smaller north German states. Austria 
was supported by Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Baden, 
and the two Hesses. General Benedek headed the Austrian forces, 
comprising about 250,000 men ; the Prussian armies were superior 
in numbers, somewhat inferior in artillery and cavalry, but had 
an enormous advantage, not only in von Moltke's daring and 



610 A History of the World 

comprehensive strategy, but in the possession of the famous " needle- 
gun," a breech-loading rifle which could fire several shots for one 
delivered by the Austrian muzzle-loaders, and which was wielded 
by infantry thoroughly trained in its steady and effective use. 
Hanover and electoral Hesse (Hessen-Cassel) were at once invaded 
and subdued. Saxony was overrun, its sovereign and army retreat- 
ing to Bohemia. Then two great bodies of men invaded Bohemia 
by different routes, each winning several actions on the way through 
the mountains. On July 3rd their united forces gained the great 
battle of Koniggratz or Sadowa (villages in the north of Bohemia), 
and, marching southwards and winning another battle, forced 
Austria to a truce when Vienna itself was threatened. Prague 
and Briinn had been occupied, and Hungary invaded, when French 
mediation brought negotiations ending the war with the Peace of 
Prague between Austria and Prussia. The new arrangement of 
Germany excluded Austria, and incorporated Schleswig-Holstein, 
Hanover, Hessen-Cassel, Nassau, and the " free " city of Frankfurt- 
on-the-Main, with Prussia, increasing her territory from 111,000 
to 140,000 square miles, and her population from 19,000,000 to 
23,500,000. An offensive and defensive alliance was concluded 
with Wurtemberg, Baden, Bavaria, Hessen-Darmstadt, and Saxony, 
those countries also engaging to place their troops, in case of 
war, under the supreme command of the king of Prussia. A 
North German Confederation was formed, with a Diet on a basis 
of manhood and direct suffrage, under the presidency of the 
Prussian sovereign, and an Imperial Diet {Reichstag) was also 
created on the same system. The military forces were centralised 
under the Prussian king's command, with universal compulsory 
service, and the customs, telegraph, and postal services were united. 
Count Bismarck became Chancellor of the Confederation. It was 
exactly 60 years since the old German (" Holy Roman ") Empire 
had been ended by Napoleon's conquering power. The new 
organisation comprised 21 states, including Brunswick, Oldenburg, 
Saxony, the Mecklenburgs, Hamburg, Liibeck, Bremen, and Saxe- 
Coburg, in addition to those already named. Thus Prussia became 
the leading power in Germany, and one of the chief military 
powers in Europe, a position heightened, as we have seen, by the 
result of her conflict with France four years later. 

The new Confederation had a brief existence, during which 
the Zollverein, in a remodelled form, was extended to every part 
of Germany except the cities of Hamburg and Bremen. The 



The New German Empire 6 1 1 

existing political condition arose after the grand success obtained 
against France. The southern states (Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Baden, 
and Ffessen-Darmstadt) had been admitted to the " North German" 
Confederation, making it the " German Confederation," after the 
victory at Sedan, and on January 18th, 187 1, the king of Prussia, 
in the halls of Versailles, the palace erected by Germany's great 
foe of old time, Louis XIV., was hailed as " Emperor of Germany " 
amid the cheers of the assembled chieftains. The new empire 
included 25 states and one Reichsland, or imperial territory — - 
Alsace-Lorraine. There were four kingdoms — Prussia, Bavaria, 
Saxony, and Wiirtemberg; six grand duchies, five duchiesj seven 
principalities, and three free towns — Hamburg, Liibeck, and 
Bremen. The legislative functions lay in a Federal Council 
(Biaidesrath) of 58 members, appointed for each session by the 
separate states, and in a Parliament or Diet (Reichstag) of 382 
members, elected by universal suffrage and by ballot for three 
years, as representatives of the whole German people of the 
empire. A free, united, powerful Germany at last existed, realising 
dreams long cherished by Teutonic patriotism, with a territory of 
217,000 square miles, and a population exceeding 41,000,000. The 
foreign policy of the new empire was conducted by Prince Bismarck 
with good judgment and success in favour of peace, to which end 
he concluded the famous " Triple Alliance " with Austria and Italy. 
In home-affairs a Protestant attack was made, in the Falk laws of 
1873 to 1875, so-called from the Prussian Minister of Public 
Worship, on the ecclesiastical rights and claims of the Catholics. 
The German state sought thereby to interfere in the schools and 
the training of teachers, and with the appointment of bishops and 
ministers. The Jesuits had been expelled in 1872, and the Catholics 
now made a strong resistance. The Pope (Pius IX.) declined to 
receive the German ambassador, and the Catholic hierarchy treated 
the new legislation as non-existent. Several prelates were banished 
from the country, and the Reichstag, in 1874, made marriage a 
mere civil rite. The resistance continued, and the Catholic deputies 
in Parliament opposed every government-measure. The election, in 
1878, of a new Pope (Leo XIII.), a man of statesmanlike capacity, 
caused a compromise. Falk resigned office in the following year, 
and peace was restored by concessions made between 1881 and 
1887. The rapid spread of socialism in Germany, already noticed, 
was met by repressive laws of a somewhat stringent character, 
and, more wisely, by legislation conceived in a socialistic spirit, 



6i2 A History of the World 

aiming at the improvement of the condition of the working-classes. 
With the same object, the commercial policy of the country became 
strongly "protectionist," and in 1884 a new colonial policy was 
undertaken, in order to provide new outlets for surplus-population 
and new markets for the rapidly improving manufactures. It 
was thus that Germany acquired extensive territories in western 
Africa, New Guinea, and some islands of the southern Pacific. 

In March, 1888, the emperor William died, at 90 years of age, 
and was succeeded by his son as Frederick III. This admirable 
man, a successful warrior, the "Crown Prince" of the conflicts of 
1866 and 1870, married to the Princess Royal of Great Britain, 
eldest child of Queen Victoria, was already suffering from an 
affection of the throat, and he died in the following June. No ruler 
was ever more deservedly and universally regretted, not for what 
he accomplished — since death deprived him of the chance of action 
— but for what he was and what he would surely have achieved. 
A brave and capable commander — " Our Fritz " of his devoted 
soldiers — he was a sincere lover of peace, kindly to his foes, modest 
in the hour of triumphant success. Patient to the last under the 
moral and physical torture of his dreadful malady, " Frederick the 
Noble " — no man ever more justly named — passed away in the 
piesence of his household-servants, gathered weeping at the door. 
His last important public appearance was in June, 1887, when he 
rode, in the magnificent white uniform of the Cuirassiers of the 
Guard, at the side of the Prince of Wales, in Queen Victoria's first 
Jubilee procession. His stately figure, admired by all beholders, 
overtopped all others in that " Cavalcade of Princes," composed 
of 24 sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons of the British sovereign. 
His social, political, and religious ideas were the reverse of those 
cherished by the emperor William and his trusted chancellor. 
Cultured, broad-minded, liberal in the best and highest sense,- he 
could not bear an autocratic system. Encouraging arts, sciences, 
and letters; loathing the prevalent fudenhetze, or hostility to Jews; 
eager to adopt every measure which might combine an imperial 
monarchy and a people in harmonious action for the good of all, 
he would have won the loftiest position on " Fame's eternal bead- 
roll " of the best rulers of mankind. 

Frederick III., second emperor and eighth king of Prussia, was 
succeeded by his eldest son as William II. The young man soon 
gave proof of his extraordinary energy, versatility, and restlessness 
of character. Unwilling to be controlled or advised by any "man 



The New German Empire — Austria-Hungary 613 

of any age, ability, or experience, he dismissed Bismarck from his 
councils in 1890, and, with high notions of divine right, and strongly 
imbued with the spirit of militarism, he nevertheless adopted a 
liberal policy towards the socialists, allowing the lapse of the legis- 
lation adverse to them, and encouraging efforts in behalf of the 
working-classes. The world has been from time to time startled 
by the impulsive utterances of the emperor, but he has, at any rate, 
worked for European peace, and set an excellent example of domestic 
virtue. The opening, in June, 1895, °f tne Baltic Canal, was 
important for commerce in shortening the route for ships from 
western Europe to the northern ports. 

The emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, a monarch regarded, 
after 50 years of power, with universal esteem, has shown that he 
does not resemble the Bourbon kings in incapacity to learn lessons 
from the past. Excluded, by the loss of Lombardy and Venetia, 
from a scene of former supremacy, the Austrian ruler and his 
ministers wisely sought political safety in consolidation of power 
to the north of the Alps. In 1867 constitutional freedom and a 
new independence were accorded to Hungary. The very composite 
dominions were divided into two parts. These were the Cisleithan 
or Sclavonic-German provinces — " Cisleithan " meaning " on this 
side the Leitha,'" a tributary of the Danube on the frontiers of the 
archduchy of Austria (the original nucleus of the empire) ; and 
the Magyar or " Transleithan " realm, to which the dependent 
territories of Croatia and Transylvania were now reunited. In 
June the emperor and empress were crowned "king and queen of 
Hungary " at Pesth, with the old historic rites, and the national 
feeling of the Hungarians was thus gratified. Hungary now had 
her own laws, parliament, ministers, and government, and the 
exclusive right of managing all affairs pertaining solely to herself. 
The ministers for affairs common to the whole empire — the army, 
foreign affairs, and finance — are responsible to neither parliament, 
but to a body called the Delegations, a parliament of 120 members, 
half chosen by the Austrian, half by the Hungarian legislature, as 
a connecting link between the two portions of the empire. Good 
use has been made by Hungary of the restored constitution, and of 
a long period of peace, in promoting civilisation by the establishment 
of an excellent system of elementary and higher education ; by the 
construction of an admirable network of railways, now largely owned 
by the state ; by the development of industry and commerce, the 
improvement of the judicature, and the institution of the Hoiiveds 



6 14 A History of the World 

(" land-defenders "), a body of men answering to the German 
"landwehr," for national defence, apart from the regular Austro- 
Hungarian army. The various nationalities — Servians, Wallachians, 
Germans, and others — enjoy equal political rights with the Magyars, 
and the country is in a fairly prosperous condition. 

In Austria proper, the Cisleithan territories, constitutional free- 
dom has greatly advanced. The Concordat of 1855 — an agreement 
with the Papacy which made Roman Catholicism a privileged 
religion, with a censorship of books and educational control — was 
annulled in 1868, and marriage was placed under the jurisdiction 
of the State. A greater degree of freedom was given to the press. 
Security against foreign foes has been sought in the adaptation of 
the military organisation to the Prussian model. The territory of 
the empire was increased in 1878, by the Treaty of Berlin, in the 
transference to Austrian administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
with a joint area of 23,000 square miles. Torn away from the ever- 
lessening Turkish empire in Europe, these regions have for 20 
years enjoyed immunity from misrule. 

Chapter V. — Switzerland; Belgium; Holland; Denmark; 
Sweden and Norway. 

In Switzerland, after 18 15, the democracy grew in power and many 
of the cantonal constitutions were modified in that direction. 
Religious troubles arose between Protestant and Catholic cantons, 
and in 1841, after some fighting in Aargau, some convents were 
suppressed, with the confiscation of lands and other property. In 
1844 the town of Lucerne was attacked by bands of volunteers, 
demanding the expulsion of the priests. Protestant indignation had 
been aroused by the concession to the Jesuits of control over public 
education. Hence arose, in 1847, the war of the Sonderbund, or 
"separate league," composed of the cantons of Lucerne, Freiburg, 
Valais, and Zug, whose people, mainly Catholic, insisted on the 
re-establishment of the convents and of Jesuit authority. The 
federal army was assembled, to the number of '50,000 men, under 
General Dufour, the Catholics being able to muster only half as 
many troops. This little civil war of less than a month's duration 
ended in the capture of Freiburg, the submission of the other 
cantons, the dissolution of the Sonderbund, and the adoption of a 
new form of constitution. The confederacy, formerly a close 
alliance of sovereign cantons, now became a federal nation, with 



Switzerland — Belgium — Holland 6 1 5 

two councils sitting in Bern, one of members representing the 
governments of the separate cantons, and the other a national 
assembly for the whole people, elected according to density of 
population. In 1874 other modifications were adopted, but the 
main point is that the Federal Government is supreme in matters of 
peace, war, treaties, the army, the postal and telegraph system, the 
coinage, weights and measures, import and export duties, public 
works, the revenue, copyright, patents, bankruptcy, and other 
matters, so that uniformity of policy and administration is secured. 
Education and manufactures have made great progress, and this 
" playground of Europe " is yearly enriched by the expenditure of 
some millions of pounds from the pockets of tourists attracted by 
the superb scenery. We note finally that in 1873 there was a 
complete rupture with the Papacy, and the institution of a Catholic 
clergy elected by the people. Entire liberty of conscience exists, 
and the order of Jesuits and its affiliated societies are excluded from 
all parts of the country. 

The political connection between Holland and Belgium, estab- 
lished at the Congress of Vienna, soon proved to be an ill-assorted 
union. The people of the northern and southern parts of the 
" kingdom of Holland " were essentially different in language, 
interests, religion, and historic feeling, and the Belgians were greatly 
dissatisfied at their exclusion from the higher civil and military 
offices. Belgium was a Catholic, agricultural, and manufacturing 
country ; Holland was largely Lutheran in religion, commercial, and 
maritime. The people of Belgium included two nationalities — the 
Flemish and the Walloon — the latter being of mingled Celtic and 
Roman origin, descended from the old Gallic Belgae of Julius 
Caesar's day. The language of the Walloons is now a dialect of 
northern French, with old Celtic and " Low German " words, and 
they are far more like the French than the Flemings in appearance 
and character. The signal for revolt in the southern provinces was 
given in 1830 by the French "July" revolution, and the volunteers 
of Liege, Tournay, and Mons being hailed by the Flemish insurgents 
as " Belgians," the name was taken as that of all the rebels. Great 
Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia soon recognised the independ- 
ence proclaimed in November, 1830, and in 1832 a large French 
army, under Marshal Gerard, forced the surrender of the citadel of 
Antwerp by the Dutch commandant, after wrecking the interior of 
the fortress by a terrific vertical shell-fire from enormous mortars. 
The new state had been already constituted as a liberal monarchy 



616 A History of the World 

under the excellent Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, formerly husband 
of our Princess Charlotte. King Leopold I. ruled with great popu- 
larity and success for 34 years, during which manufactures, arts, 
and commerce were greatly developed. The only troubles of the 
country have been electoral and parliamentary conflicts between 
the liberal and clerical (Catholic) parties on the subject of education, 
and some serious industrial riots and Socialist disturbances in the 
mining and manufacturing towns of the south-east. In 1865, on 
the king's death, his son Leopold II. came to the throne. In 
1870, when the Franco-German war caused an uneasy feeling in 
the country, Great Britain induced the two belligerent powers to 
recognise anew the neutrality of Belgium in European warfare, a 
matter which had been guaranteed by the Powers in her behalf in 
1 83 1 and 1839. We shall see hereafter the entrance of Belgium 
into Africa as a colonial nation. 

In Holland, William I., in 1840, abdicated in favour of his son, 
William II., who died in 1849, J ust after the revolutionary move- 
ment had compelled him to grant a new constitution. The reign 
of his successor, William III., was marked, in 1862, by the abolition 
of slavery in the Dutch West Indies, with compensation to the 
owners, under which about 42,000 slaves, mostly in Dutch Guiana, 
became freemen. In the following year the navigation of the 
Scheldt was freed by the purchase from Holland, on the part of 
the European naval Powers, of her right to levy tolls. In 1867 the 
" Luxemburg question " arose in an awkward form, when Louis 
Napoleon of France sought " compensation " for the increase of 
Prussian power by negotiations for the purchase of the grand duchy 
from Holland, but Prussian resistance caused the scheme to be 
abandoned, and the matter was settled after a Conference of the 
Powers in London, whereby the Prussian garrison evacuated the 
fortress of Luxemburg and the works were dismantled and destroyed, 
the duchy becoming an independent state. In 1869 capital punish- 
ment was abolished. In 1887 a new constitution increased the 
electorate by 200,000 voters, and the death of the king, in November, 
1890, brought to the throne the young Princess of Orange, Wilhelmina, 
only child of his second marriage with Emma of Waldeck, a lady 
who acted as regent until the young queen's assumption of power, 
at 18 years of age, on August 31st, 1898. 

Denmark, at the middle of the 19th century, was in trouble 
concerning the Schleswig- (Sleswick-) Holstein duchies, which 
Danish royal policy had for many years sought to make wholly 



Denmark 617 

dependent on the Danish crown. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna 
had reincorporated Holstein in the German Confederation. The 
population was, to a large extent, German in race and feeling, and 
much hostility existed towards the Danish element. In 1848 great 
discontent was caused by King Frederick VII. 's proclamation that 
Sleswick was to be an integral part of the Danish kingdom, and 
his refusal to summon the common " estates " of the joint duchies. 
The German party in both territories were united in feeling, and 
in March, 1848, a revolt occurred in Holstein under the leadership 
of Prince Frederick of Augustenburg. The Holsteiners were aided 
by Prussian and Confederation troops, and some sharp fighting 
took place. In April, 1849, the Danish redoubts at Diippel were 
stormed by Bavarian and Saxon troops, and the Danes, a few days 
later, were defeated by the Schleswig-Holstein army under the 
Prussian general Bonin. Peace came for a few months, concluded 
between Denmark, Prussia, and the Confederation, but in January, 
1850, the struggle was renewed by the duchies, whose forces were 
several times severely defeated by the Danes. Austrian intervention 
then brought a cessation of hostilities, Denmark making a vague 
promise to " respect the rights of the duchies," but continuing 
really her former policy of hostility to the German element and of 
attempts to render the territory thoroughly Danish. It was im- 
possible that such a state of things could continue, and the 
"Schleswig-Holstein question " became the terror of Lord Palmerston 
and other great European diplomatists. The matter came to a 
crisis on the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark at the end of 
1863, when Frederick of Augustenburg proclaimed himself " Duke 
of Sleswick," a title also claimed by the new king of Denmark, 
Christian IX. In 1864 conjoint forces of Austria and Prussia 
invaded the territory, overwhelmed the Danish troops, with the 
storming of the Diippel lines by the Prussians, and occupied Alsen 
island and all Jutland by the end of June. Some naval warfare 
was also unfavourable to the Danes, and the Peace of Vienna, in 
October, 1864, concluded the war with the renunciation by Denmark 
of all her claims on the duchies, which ultimately became, as we 
have seen, an integral part of the Prussian state. Denmark has 
since remained in a peaceful and prosperous condition, deriving 
large sums of money from the dairy-industry conducted with great 
skill by her people, and distinguished among European nations in 
the fact that her royal family has given a king to Greece, a tsarina 
to Russia, and a Princess of Wales to Great Britain. 



618 A History of the World 

In Sweden and Norway, we find Bernadotte, Napoleon's former 
marshal and foe, succeeding to the throne in 1818 as Charles XIV., 
and actively engaged, during a reign of 26 years, in the useful work 
of educational and financial reform, the development of com- 
munication by roads and canals, and the reclamation of waste-lands 
in the vast territory under his control. A constitutional reform, in 
the shape of a directly elected parliament replacing the old diet, 
came in 1866, under the reign of Charles XV. A continuance of 
peace has favoured the commercial and industrial activity which 
arose in Sweden about the middle of the 19th century, and the 
national representatives of the peasantry and the trading-class, the 
chief holders of power under the new constitution, have been 
actively engaged on questions of internal development and reform. 
Norway now derives much pecuniary advantage from the annual 
visits of yearly increasing numbers of British and other tourists 
— yachtsmen, salmon-fishers, and lovers of fine scenery. The 
present king of the two countries, Oscar II., has already received 
honourable mention in these pages in connection with international 
arbitration. 

Chapter VI. — Southern Europe: Spain; Portugal; Italy; 

Greece. 

The history of Spain since 1815 presents for the most part a dreary 
record of disaster and disgrace — tyranny, revolution, civil war, only 
of late years ending in the establishment of a constitutional govern- 
ment. The miserably perfidious Ferdinand VII., on his restoration 
to his kingdom in 1814, set aside the "Constitution of Cadiz" of 
181 2, which he had sworn to maintain, and, after being compelled 
by revolt to recognise it for three years, from 1820 to 1823, he was 
enabled by French aid to re-establish absolute power until his death 
in 1833. His young daughter Isabella was acknowledged queen by 
the Cortes, under the regency of her mother Marie Christina, a 
Neapolitan Bourbon, and a civil war was at once begun by Don 
Carlos, the deceased king's brother, who claimed the throne 
under the old Salic law excluding females. The "Carlists" and 
" Christinos : ' were in conflict for years with variations of success, 
but in the end, with the general support of European opinion, and 
armed aid from British and French volunteers, the young queen's 
cause was successful, and she assumed power in 1843, with an oath 
to observe the constitutional form of rule. Order was fairly main 



Spain 619 

tained under the influence of the prudent and energetic minister 
Narvaez, and liberalism made some progress, with the rise of a 
republican feeling after 1848. The administration of affairs was 
generally corrupt, under many successive ministries, but progress in 
internal development, and an increase of naval and military strength, 
took place during seven years of really liberal government from 1858 
to 1865. Three years later, a revolution arose at Cadiz, under the 
leadership of General Prim and Marshal Serrano, and Queen 
Isabella, whose vicious private life had disgusted all classes, fled to 
France, the deposition of the Bourbons being proclaimed. After 
two years of "provisional government," and the assassination of 
Prim, who had been virtually dictator, in December, 1870, the 
Spanish throne was offered to and accepted by Amadeus of Savoy, 
second son of Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy. In 1873 he resigned 
the crown, and a republic was proclaimed, leading to a second 
Carlist war, which raged in the north of Spain in behalf of another 
Don Carlos, a collateral descendant of the former claimant. At 
the end of 1874 Isabella's son was proclaimed king as Alfonso XII., 
and early in 1876 Don Carlos gave up the struggle and withdrew to 
France. For 11 years, from 1874 until 1885, when Alfonso died, 
Spain enjoyed a period of comparative prosperity and improve- 
ment, which continued under the constitutional rule, as Regent, of 
his widow Christina, an Austrian princess, holding power for her 
son Alfonso XIII., born in May, 1886, some months after her 
husband's death. On August 8th, 1897, the hateful energy of the 
enemies of the human race styled " anarchists " was again lament- 
ably displayed in the assassination of one of the best Spanish states- 
men of modern times. Seiior Canovas del Castillo, after having 
held office as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Finance 
and of the Colonies, took a leading part in bringing Alfonso XII. to 
the throne, and then becam; in succession twice Premier, President 
of the Cortes, and again Premier in 1890, and, for the fourth time, 
in March, 1895. The son of a peasant, ugly in person, brilliant, 
a man of sarcastic and witty speech, he became the head of the 
Conservative party, being followed also by the masses owing to his 
wonderful oratorical power. His services to Spain included the 
passing of the law for the abolition of slavery, financial reforms 
which restored the credit of the state, and the restoration of universal 
suffrage. At a crisis of trouble due to the long-continued Cuban 
rebellion, Canovas was fatally wounded, by a Neapolitan anarchist, 
with three shots from a revolver, in the piazza of an hotel at Santa 



Gio A History of the World 

Agueda, in the Basque country, between Vitoria and San Sebastian. 
He fell at the feet of his wife, a young and beautiful woman of an 
illustrious and ancient family, a " society belle " devoted to and 
proud of her ill-favoured and ill-fated husband. 

After the downfall of Napoleon, the affairs of Portugal, like those 
of Spain, were for many years in a troubled state. In 1815 the 
Inquisition was abolished, and the Jesuits were expelled, but the 
sovereign, John VI., and the court resided at Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, 
until 182 1, and much public discontent existed in Portugal, where 
the government was in the hands of English officers, including 
Marshal Beresford, one of the commanders in the Peninsular War. 
In 1820 a peaceful revolution at Lisbon set up constitutional rule 
in a highly democratic form, and the king, returning from Brazil, 
accepted this new system. A despotic party at court, headed by 
the queen, a Spanish princess, and her son Dom Miguel, caused a 
counter-revolution in 1823, with the dissolution of the Cortes. The 
king, dying in 1826, left the throne to his son Dom Pedro, who 
had become emperor of Brazil as an independent country, but he 
renounced the Portuguese sovereignty in favour of his daughter 
Maria da Gloria, on condition of her marrying her uncle, Dom 
Miguel, who was to be regent. The despotic party claimed the 
throne for Dom Miguel as an absolute ruler, and in 1828 he was 
declared king by the Cortes. A period of anarchical confusion 
followed. In 1832 Dom Pedro, resigning the Brazilian crown, 
returned to Europe, overthrew the usurper with the aid of a British 
squadron under Charles Napier, and set up Maria as queen in 1833. 
Her reign was troubled by contests between parties favouring different 
constitutional forms of rule, but peace was generally maintained 
with the useful aid of her second husband, Ferdinand of Saxe- 
Coburg, brother of Queen Victoria's admirable consort. On Queen 
Maria's death in 1853, her son became king as Pedro V., and 
progress was made in restoring financial affairs, under the manage- 
ment of his father as regent. On the king's sudden death in 1861, 
his brother succeeded as Luis I. and ruled steadily as a constitutional 
monarch until his death in 1889, when his son came to the throne 
as Charles I. 

Italy, since the peace of 181 5, has been the theatre of most 
important events, amounting to a complete revolution of affairs in 
that long-divided, much -harassed land of ancient and mediaeval 
renown. The Congress of Vienna left the country, as we have seen, 
in the hands of several rulers caring nothing for the aspirations of 



Italy 621 

Italians for union and independence. For 45 years, from 1815 to 
i860, Austria and the Bourbons held most of the country enslaved 
under a rigorous system of repression. The Jesuits were restored, 
and to their hands was committed the work of elementary education, 
with results that may be easily conceived. Secret political societies, 
such as the famous league styled Carbonari, aimed at the overthrow 
of despotic rule. The above name was derived from that assumed 
by certain republicans of Naples under Murat's rule, who made 
their way to the wild regions of the Abruzzi frequented by the 
" carbonari " or charcoal-burners. Insurrections in southern Italy 
were crushed in 1820 and 1821 by Austrian aid, and like failure 
attended similar movements in subsequent years, in Piedmont, 
Modena, Lombardy, and other quarters. Priests, army-officers, and 
ladies were found among the Carbonari, who included most of the 
patriotism and intelligence of Italy, but the lack of military force, 
good leadership, and funds made all efforts futile for many dreary 
years of conspiracy closely watched by ubiquitous police-spies. 
After the failure of revolutionary attempts in central Italy in 1831, 
the party styled " Young Italy " was organised by the able and 
famous patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, aiming at the establishment of 
a republic. Many wild and useless efforts were made, but there 
is no evidence to convict him or his supporters of any policy 
of assassination. Expelled in turn from France and Switzerland, 
Mazzini sought refuge in London, and carried on his work from 
1833 to 1848 in the European press and by secret correspondence 
with Italy. The hope of freedom was flattered for a time by the 
advent of Pius IX., in 1846, to the Papacy. He began a course 
of liberal reforms, and even Ferdinand II. of Naples granted a 
"constitution" in 1848. That revolutionary year seemed to be 
carrying Mazzini and his party to the front, and the rebels for a time 
drove the Austrian troops from Lombardy and Venetia, Modena 
and Parma. The fair prospect was soon overshadowed by reactionary 
gloom. Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, declared war on Austria 
and won an initial victory, but his forces were completely defeated 
in later battles, notably at Novara, in March, 1849, and the broken- 
hearted monarch gave up his throne to his son Victor Emmanuel II. 
The Pope, meanwhile, had withdrawn, as if in terror, from the 
advanced political position which he had assumed, and had been 
driven from Rome, where a republic was set up, in February, 1849, 
by Mazzini and two co-triumvirs. The great patriot Giuseppe 
Garibaldi, who had twice defeated the king of Naples' forces 



622 A History of the World 

defended Rome with desperate valour against a besieging French 
army, but the place was taken on July 2nd. Venice, heroically 
maintained for a long time by the patriots under Daniel Manin, 
succumbed to the Austrian forces in August, and the petty sovereigns 
returned to power, the Pope's throne henceforth resting on French 
bayonets, with a state of siege maintained in his capital for seven 
years from 1850. Henceforth Italian patriots looked to the House 
of Savoy, the king of Sardinia, as the chief hope for unity and 
freedom. 

At the middle of the century Sardinia was the only constitutional 
monarchy in the whole peninsula. The excellent king, Victor 
Emmanuel, honoured by his popular title " II Re Galantuomo," 
" the honest king," bestowed on him in contrast with the perfidious 
tyrant Ferdinand of Naples, was a bluff, brave specimen of a noble 
race, animated by the straightforward and steadfast purpose of ruling 
a free people in such wise as best to promote their prosperity and 
happiness. He had the advantage of possessing, as his chief 
minister, one of the ablest and most enlightened of modern European 
diplomatists and statesmen, Count Cavour, who may be fairly 
regarded as a chief agent in the restoration of Italian unity and 
nationality. As a traveller and resident in England and France, 
he had become well acquainted with the details of constitutional 
government, and with the industrial and economical conditions 
conducive to national welfare. After serving with excellent results 
as Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, of Marine, and of Finance, 
Cavour became Premier in 1853, and at once took in hand the 
work of forcing Sardinia to the front as representing the cause of 
Italian unity and independence. With great tact, he aided the 
French and British allied forces before Sebastopol, in 1855, at a 
time of difficulty, with a well-appointed brigade of 15,000 men, who 
fought victoriously against the Russians in August of that year, at 
the battle of the Tchernaya. Thereby winning French and British 
sympathy, the great Italian minister intrigued with Louis Napoleon, 
the French emperor, for a combined movement against Austrian 
domination in northern Italy, and his efforts were backed in a manner 
as far as possible removed from the sphere of his knowledge and 
control of affairs. In January, 1858, a desperate and almost 
successful attempt was made to assassinate the emperor by the 
explosion of three bombs under his carriage close to the entrance 
of the Opera-house in Paris. The leading conspirator in thjs 
atrocious affair was Felice Orsini, a member of the noble family 



Italy 623 

known in the old times as supporters of the Guelph party, and one 
which had produced famous scholars, soldiers, and ecclesiastics, 
including Popes Nicholas III. and Benedict XIII. The Orsini of 
the modern plot, a man of violent character, had escaped to 
England in 1856 from imprisonment in the fortress of Mantua. 
The outrage in Paris caused the death of ten persons and the 
wounding of 156, and Orsini and an accomplice died by the 
guillotine. It is believed that Napoleon III. was influenced by 
expressions in Orsini's will intimating that there could be no safety 
for the emperor from Italian plots until Italian freedom was 
obtained. However that may be, the French ruler soon resolved 
to draw the sword, and he took the field in support of Sardinia in 
the spring of 1859. The war was a brief one. The French had a 
great advantage in the use of rifled cannon, and in generalship which 
was at any rate superior to the miserable incompetence of the 
Austrian commanders. In May the Austrians w r ere defeated at 
Montebello ; again, on June 4th, at Magenta ; and on June 24th 
at the great battle of Solferino. The fear of Prussian intervention 
caused the French emperor to patch up a hasty preliminary peace 
at Villafranca on July 13th, and in November the Peace of Zurich 
ceded Lombardy, apart from the fortresses of Mantua and Peschiera, 
to Sardinia, and gave Nice and Savoy, by way of compensation, to 
France. Early in i860, Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and some Papal 
territory, also fell to Victor Emmanuel, with the consent of Austria 
and France, and a good beginning had thus been made towards 
Italian liberation and unity. During the struggle with Austria, 
Garibaldi had played his part as a guerilla-leader, acting on the 
Austrian communications, and that ideal patriot and hero now came 
to the front as a chief agent in freeing southern Italy. 

The condition of the " kingdom of the two Sicilies " (Naples 
and Sicily) was a scandal to the civilised world under the vile 
tyranny of Francis II., who had succeeded in 1859 to his father 
Ferdinand, the monarch infamously known as " King Bomba " from 
his having shelled his people in the cities of Messina and Palermo 
when they revolted against his violation of the constitution which 
he had sworn to maintain. His atrocious treatment of liberal 
politicians who had broken no law had been mercilessly exposed 
in 1 85 1 by Mr. Gladstone, in the famous "Naples letters" to Lord 
Aberdeen, wherein he justly assailed the tyrant's whole system of 
rule as "the negation of God." In May, i860, Garibaldi, with 1,000 
of his red-shirted volunteers, landed at Marsala, on the west coast 
41 



624 A History of the World 

of Sicily. His numbers were rapidly increased, and after some 
fighting the Neapolitan troops were withdrawn from all points 
except the citadel of Messina. The conqueror crossed to the main- 
land on August 20th, and made a triumphal progress through the 
south of the peninsula, forcing the king to leave Naples for the 
fortress of Gaeta. Piedmontese troops had meanwhile occupied 
Umbria and the Marches, and the Papal States, excepting Rome 
and adjacent territory, were seized and annexed by Victor Em- 
manuel. The Sardinian king then invaded the Neapolitan territory 
and joined Garibaldi, and Capua was taken on the retreat of the 
royal troops. Gaeta was forced to capitulate in February, 1861, 
after a brave defence, and the whole of the territory of Naples and 
Sicily came into the hands of Victor Emmanuel, as king of an Italy 
which included the whole peninsula except Venetia and the city 
and Papal domain of Rome. Some rash attempts of Garibaldi, 
made without the sanction of his sovereign, to obtain possession of 
Rome, which was held by French troops, ended in his defeat at 
Aspromonte, by Italian royal troops, in August, 1862, and at 
Mentana, by French troops, in November, 1867. In 1861 the new 
Italian kingdom had a severe loss in the premature death of the 
prudent and wily Cavour, and the government for some years found 
much difficulty in reducing to order the Neapolitan territories, 
swarming with brigands who fought, as they declared, for " King 
Francis," and under that cloak committed all sorts of outrages. In 
1864 Florence became the capital instead of Turin, and Italian 
patriots looked eagerly forward to the possession of Venetia and 
Rome. The first of these objects was attained in 1866, after the 
Austro-Prussian war. Austrian pride, as against Italy, Prussia's ally 
in that struggle, was gratified by her victory over Italian land-forces 
at Custozza, and by her naval triumph at Lissa, in the Adriatic. 
On the conclusion of peace, Venetia was transferred, first to the 
French emperor and then to the king of Italy, along with Peschiera 
and the other Austrian fortresses of the famous " Quadrilateral." 
Rome alone remained for the completion of Italian unity. This 
last prize came with the downfall of French imperial power in 1870. 
On September 20th Italian troops entered Rome by the Porta Pia, 
which had been breached by a few shots from the artillery, and in 
June, 1871, the "Eternal City" became at last the capital. The 
temporal power of the Papacy had an end, the Pope retaining 
possession only of the Vatican, the Lateran palace, the church of 
Santa Maria Maggiore, the villa of Castel Gandolfo, and their 



Italy 625 

precincts, with an income of ^150,000 a year voted from the Italian 
revenues. Italy, entering the European system of states as the 
sixth great Power, has incurred vast financial expense in the main- 
tenance of a great military and naval force, entailing a very serious 
burden of taxation on a people mainly dependent on the products 
of the soil. Victor Emmanuel, dying in January, 1878, was succeeded 
by his eldest son Humbert I., who has ruled fairly well as a consti- 
tutional sovereign. Much progress has been made with education, 
Sicily and southern Italy being still the most backward parts of 
the kingdom in this respect. 

In May, 1898, at the time when an illustrious British statesman 
lay dying at Hawarden Castle — the man revered by all good Italians 
as a champion of the cause of freedom in Italy — there was a violent 
outbreak of the revolutionary spirit of socialism, republicanism, and 
anarchy in Milan, Naples, Leghorn, and other Italian towns. Revolt 
had been long expected by those who were best acquainted with the 
misery due to taxation which made salt, an absolute necessary with 
vegetable diet, a luxury unattainable by the poorer peasantry, and 
which mulcted of a large part of their wages men earning only from 
1 1 francs to 4 francs per day, in support of an ambitious policy of 
rivalry with European states of vastly superior resources. Discontent 
was at last, under a great rise in the price of bread, turned into the 
madness of starvation and despair. At Milan the populace and the 
troops engaged in a conflict marked by the erection of barricades, the 
use of artillery, and the slaughter of some hundreds of men. A state 
of siege was declared, and tranquillity was only restored when there 
were 40,000 troops in possession of the city. At Naples the crowd 
of rioters and the troops fought hand to hand, and streets were strewn 
with dead and wounded men. Like tumult occurred at Florence and 
other towns of Tuscany. Most of Italy was for a time in a state of 
suspended constitutional freedom, under military law, and the noble 
structure erected by the valour of Garibaldi and the genius of Cavour 
was seriously endangered through long-continued misrule. It was 
made clear to all impartial observers and true friends of Italy that 
immediate reform, including vigilant economy, the stern punishment 
of defaulters, and the contraction of costly armaments, could alone 
save the country from anarchy and dismemberment. 

As regards the Papacy in the 19th century, the loss of temporal 
power has been attended by a great gain of spiritual influence. 
Pius VII., restored to his rule of the Papal States in 1814, held 
power till his death in 1823, combining a conciliatory temper with 



626 A History of the World 

a bigoted and inflexible policy in ecclesiastical affairs. Simple in 
tastes, devout, benevolent, he was a wise and moderate ruler, who, 
nevertheless, dealt energetically with brigandage and the secret 
societies. Under Leo XII. (1823-29), Pius VIII. (1829-30), and 
Gregory XVI. (1831-46), the Catholic revival was greatly promoted 
by the purity of life exhibited in the holders of the Papal chair. A 
spirit of zeal and of loyalty to the Holy See was displayed alike by 
Catholic clergy and laity in all quarters, and in France eminent men, 
Montalembert, Lamennais, and their school, sought to combine a 
new liberalism of thought with complete submission to the teachings 
of the head of the Church. Pius IX. (1846-78), who was Pope for 
a longer period than any of his predecessors, has been already seen 
in his brief career as a political reformer. After his restoration to 
power by French troops, he made a new departure, as regarded 
England, in refounding the hierarchy of Catholic bishops, headed 
by the able and cultured Cardinal Wiseman as archbishop of West- 
minster. Pio Nono, in 1854, issued the famous Bull defining, as a 
Catholic dogma, the " Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary." 
Ten years later, his Catholic zeal caused him to issue an encyclical 
letter with a Syllabus specially condemning certain erroneous beliefs 
of the day. The annexation of most of the Papal territory by Victor 
Emmanuel in i860 made Pius IX. a fervid foe of the Italian kingdom, 
and his feeling was from time to time displayed in hot denunciations 
whose tone was in strange contrast to his really mild and benevolent 
disposition. In July, 1870, the famous Vatican Council, attended 
by prelates from all parts of the world, decreed the doctrine of 
" Papal Infallibility," rejected by a small minority of the bishops, 
and by a considerable and enlightened part of the laity, forming the 
body known as " Old Catholics." On the occupation of Rome by 
the Italian government in September, 1870, and the cessation of 
the temporal power of the Papacy, Pius IX. aroused the sympathy 
of the Catholic world by his assumption of the character of a martyr, 
or, at least, a " confessor," as " the prisoner of the Vatican." He 
was always treated with the utmost courtesy and forbearance by 
the Italian government, but he issued constant letters of appeal to 
his devoted Catholic followers in foreign countries, and was consoled 
by the visits of crowds of " pilgrims," and by liberal contributions 
of " Peter's pence " and costly presents in various forms. It should 
be observed to his credit that he refused to accept the large pension 
voted to him by the Italian Parliament. A month before his death 
in February, 1878, he sent the Papal benediction to that politically 



Greece 627 

erring son of the Church, Victor Emmanuel, as he lay dying. His 
successor, Cardinal Pecci, assuming the title of Leo XIII., still, after 
20 years (in 1898), at a very advanced age, fills the Papal See in 
a statesmanlike manner which has won for him general respect and 
esteem. It was his wise diplomacy which, in Germany, effected 
a compromise concerning the anti-Catholic laws. In 1888, after 
a report from his special envoy to Ireland, Leo issued a circular 
to the Irish bishops condemning the practice of " boycotting," and 
the movement against payment of rent known as " the Plan of 
Campaign." The Irish Catholic laity, devoted followers as they are 
of the Pope in spiritual matters, paid no heed whatever to his 
injunctions in affairs regarded by them as purely social and political. 
In 1 89 1 an encyclical letter to the Catholic bishops propounded 
principles which should be observed in dealing with contests of the 
day between workers and capitalists. 

The regeneration of Greece is one of the most interesting facts 

of modern European history. After the conquest of Peloponnesus 

by the Turks in 17 15, a revival of Greek influence came in the 

appointment of Greeks to many posts of importance under the 

Ottoman government, and the establishment of schools in all parts 

of Greece through the aid of wealthy and enlightened patriots. 

Towards the end of the 18th century, premature armed efforts for 

independence were crushed with the usual Turkish barbarity, but 

a great impression was made by the heroic valour displayed by the 

Suliotes of Epirus, a race cf mixed Hellenic and Albanian origin. 

In a community comprising less than 600 families, dwelling in 

hamlets among the mountains, the women and boys fought like 

brave athletic men, a remnant only escaping, in 1803, to the Ionian 

Islands. The French Revolution gave a new impulse to the rising 

spirit of Greek nationality, and the admirable scholar Adamantios 

Corais (or Koraes) not only fostered this spirit, but was the first to 

purify the modern Greek language and reduce it to fixed rules, and 

to bring home to the modern Greeks a knowledge of the ancient 

literature. At the same time, among the islands of the ^Egean, 

arose the nucleus of the naval force which played so glorious a part 

in the war of liberation. All classes of the Greek world — the 

priests, the scholars, the merchants, the mountaineers, the peasantry, 

and the large maritime population — were united in aspirations for 

freedom, and they had many foreign sympathisers, especially in 

France and in the British Isles, where attention to Greek claims 

was strongly aroused by the magnificent poetry of Lord Byron. 



628 A History of the World 

The hour for revolt came in April, 182 1, when the patriots of the 
Morea (Peloponnesus) rose in arms, and a six-years' struggle began 
under the leadership of such heroes as Marcos Bozzaris, who fell 
fighting at the head of a Suliote force in 1823 ; Alexander Mauro- 
cordatos (Mavrocordato), the resolute defender of Missolonghi in 
1822-23 5 Constantine Kanaris, the dashing seaman who twice, in 
1822, blew up a Turkish admiral's ship, and in August, 1824, burnt 
a large frigate and some transports with Turkish troops on board ; 
Theodoros Kolokotronis, a modern Ulysses, inexhaustible in 
stratagems, fearless in perils, rich in popular and humorous 
eloquence ; Andreas Miaulis, the chief naval commander, " an iron 
man who never smiled and never wept," of great valour and skill. 
The contest was marked by deeds of heroism and cruelty unsurpassed 
in modern times. In many actions thousands of Turks were beaten 
by only hundreds of Greeks, but the Ottoman government was 
continually able to place great bodies of men in the field, ably led, 
in the latter part of the war, by Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mehemet 
Ali, Pasha of Egypt. In 1821 many thousands of Greeks were 
murdered at Constantinople, Adrianople, Thessalonica, Smyrna, and 
other towns. In 1822 the beautiful and fertile island of Chios was 
desolated by the Turks with the most savage barbarity and the 
utmost horrors of bestial criminality, involving the slaughter of 
25,000 men, women, and children, the selling of nearly double that 
number into slavery, and the reduction of a smiling garden to a 
desert of ruin. 

In 1823 Lord Byron joined the Greek patriots, and aided them 
with money and counsel until his premature death at Missolonghi 
in April, 1824, as he was about to take the field at the head of a 
corps of Suliotes of his own raising. Many victories were won by 
the little Greek navy, whose commanders struck terror into the foe 
by their use of fireships. In 1825 Ibrahim Pasha landed in 
Peloponnesus with a large well-trained army. The Greeks resisted 
with a valour that reminded men of the days of Leonidas, and a 
crisis came in the siege of Missolonghi, defended by 5,000 men and 
attacked by 20,000 Turks, supported by a powerful fleet. Many 
assaults were repulsed in the course of five months, and many 
valiant sorties did great damage to the besiegers. In January, 1826, 
the Turkish commander was joined by Ibrahim with the reinforcement 
of 10,000 excellent troops and a strong artillery, but a summons to 
surrender was treated by the Missolonghi men with contempt. Half 
the fortress was in ruins, and famine and disease alone had carried 



Greece 629 

off 1,500 of the people. The arrival of a Greek squadron under 
Miaulis broke the blockade, and allowed two months' provisions to 
be introduced. Further assaults were repulsed, and the place was 
then again reduced to extremities by famine in which the inhabitants 
consumed seaweed and their shoe-leather softened by a little oil. 
The streets, strewn with ruins due to bombardment, showed men 
women, and children lying dead or dying from pestilence and 
hunger. In this desperate condition of affairs, a sortie of all the 
people was arranged, with all the able-bodied men and women, the 
latter armed and in men's dress, taking the lead, the mothers 
carrying a sword in the right hand, and their infants on the left arm, 
or slung on their backs. Then were to come the old men, women, 
and children, with a military guard in the rear. A few decrepit 
persons were to remain in the town. The plan was betrayed, and 
the advance-guard found vast masses of Turks and Egyptians ready 
to receive them. Most were driven back into the town, and the 
Greeks fought all night in every street and house, and finally blew 
up the magazine with a large body of the enemy. Missolonghi was 
thus captured as a blackened heap of ruins. About i,Soo men and 
women had effected their escape in the sortie ; 3,000 people lay 
dead in the town. After the fall of Missolonghi, followed by the 
bombardment and capture of Athens, and the failure of attempts 
to drive the Turks out of Attica, the Greek cause was in a desperate 
condition, with all continental Greece in Turkish possession, and 
Peloponnesus ravaged by Ibrahim Pasha with the deliberate purpose 
of extirpating the whole Greek population and replacing them by 
Egyptians and Arabs. At last, however, some of the European 
Powers resolved to interfere. The fall of Missolonghi had aroused 
general sympathy, and the great British statesman George Canning, 
becoming Premier in February, 1827, induced France and Russia, 
in July, to join this country in a demand for an armistice. The 
fleets of the three countries were sent to the Peloponnesus, and 
there on October 20th, 1827, two months after Canning's death, an 
accidental collision brought the battle of Navarino, in which the 
Turkish and Egyptian fleets were destroyed by the British, French, 
and Russian ships. The Turkish government even then refused to 
grant an armistice, and the war continued. In the autumn of 1829 
defeats of the Turks by fresh Greek and by French forces freed 
continental Greece, but the country was really saved by the success 
of Russia in war against Turkey, who acknowledged the independence 
of Greece in 1830. 



630 A History of the World 

In May, 1832, a new kingdom of Greece was recognised by the 
Treaty of London, under the rule of Otho, son of the king of 
Bavaria, the Greek territory including the mainland south of the 
Gulfs of Pagasae and Ambrakia, with Peloponnesus, Eubcea, and 
the Cyclades islands, while Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and Crete 
were still left under Turkish rule. The Greek monarch, in a reign 
of over 30 years, did nothing to satisfy the reasonable demands 
or the ambitious dreams of his subjects. The system of rule was 
tyrannical and corrupt, and public offices were filled by royal 
favourites and flatterers. In 1843 a rebellion forced Otho to grant 
a constitutional form of government, but he remained unpopular, 
and a general movement forced his abdication in October, 1862. 
In March, 1863, the throne was accepted by Prince George of 
Denmark, brother of the lady who had just become Princess of 
Wales. In the following year Greek territory was increased by 
the Ionian Islands, the " protectorate " of which was renounced by 
Great Britain. That Power has, on several occasions, usefully employed 
her influence in preventing the little state from entering into conflict 
with Turkey, chiefly in connection with chronic rebellion in Candia, 
or Crete, due to Ottoman misrule, and to the desire of most of the 
Cretan population for union with Greece. The country has not 
made the progress hoped for by her friends, and has wasted, on 
ambitious aims, for expansion of her borders at Turkey's expense, 
the energies which would have been better employed in developing 
the natural resources of the region under her legitimate control. In 
1881 the kingdom received a substantial increase of territory in 
Thessaly and part of Epirus, a benefit largely due to the British 
government, which induced some of the Powers to join her in 
compelling Turkey to act in accordance with suggestions made in 
the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The depressed condition of the 
country 20 years later, in 1898, was due to her suicidal folly 
in connection with the eternal Cretan question. Another Cretan 
revolt, carried on in 1896-97, caused the dispatch of the fleets of 
the Powers to the coasts of the island, with an order to Greece to 
withdraw troops which had been permitted to invade it. In March, 
1897, the Greek government, refusing compliance, prepared for 
war with Turkey, and in April irregular forces crossed the frontier, 
followed by the Greek army. The conflict which ensued had the 
inevitable result foreseen by all intelligent and cool-headed observers. 
The invaders, ill-provided and badly led. were promptly over- 
whelmed by superior forces ably commanded, and, after a complete 



Russia 631 

victory at the Miluna Pass, the Turks occupied Larissa on April 
25th. Volo surrendered on the following day, and the general 
result was not affected by some repulses of Turkish forces early 
in May. Pharsala was occupied, and on May 20th the Sultan 
granted an armistice sorely needed by his opponents. After much 
negotiation, terms of peace, with the consent of the Powers, were 
settled in September, 1897, Greece being compelled to pay, as a 
penalty for her rashness, a war-indemnity of ^4,000,000 sterling, 
and to accept a rectification of the Thessalian frontier which put 
the chief points of strategical importance in possession of Turkey, 
along with a foothold on the southern bank of the river Peneus. 
The finances of Greece were placed, until the full payment of the 
indemnity, under the control of the Powers. 

Chapter VII. — Russia. 

One of the chief notes of political history in the 19th century 
is the great advance of the Russian empire in European and Asiatic 
influence, a result partly due to natural growth in population, the 
raw material of military force in these days of vast standing armies, 
and partly to the exercise of a diplomacy remarkable for combined 
persistence, audacity, and craft. Leaving aside for the moment 
Russian affairs as connected with Turkey and the "Eastern 
Question," we deal with the internal events of the empire and her 
territorial acquisitions. Under Alexander I. (1801-1825), after the 
new settlement of Europe in 18 15, the earlier promise of the reign 
regarding the establishment of a more liberal system of rule was 
succeeded by a reactionary policy due to the influence of Metternich. 
Severe measures of repression were thus adopted by a monarch, a 
man of somewhat unstable and emotional character, who had at one 
time been credited with almost Republican principles. He showed 
no sympathy with the efforts of the Greeks for freedom, and died 
unlamented in December, 1825. Having no legitimate heirs of his 
own body, Alexander I. was succeeded, through the renunciation 
of the throne by the Grand-duke Constantine, by his youngest 
brother as Nicholas I., a man of determined character, who had to 
begin his reign by crushing, with the utmost cruelty and vigour, a 
revolt planned by members of the higher classes and supported by 
many army-officers. The new ruler, temperate, frugal, intensely 
Russian, and a devotee of Panslavism, adopted the system of 
absolutism based upon military force, and was the steady opponent 



632 A History of the World 

of political and intellectual progress, restraining education within 
the practical limits of preparation for the public service, and 
exercising a severe censorship of the press. Along with this general 
bureaucratic tyranny, the emperor sought to Russianise all his 
subjects, and to bring Roman Catholics and Protestants within the 
" orthodox " fold of the Russo-Greek Church of which, as tsar, he 
was the head. 

In war with Persia, Nicholas forced the cession of Erivan and 
other territory, but his chief addition to the empire by conquest 
was in the Caucasus. Russian attacks on the independence of the 
mountaineers in that region began in 1813, and the determined 
resistance made to aggression for more than half a century drew the 
admiring attention of all free peoples. One of the great patriotic 
heroes of modern days was the chief named Shamyl, leader of the 
Lesghians in the south-east of the great range, a man of infinite 
courage and resource, a marvel of "luck" in his many escapes from 
positions of the utmost peril, and after capture by his foes. In 1824, 
in the prime of early manhood, this renowned warrior took up 
arms against Russia, and, as a priest or " mollah " of the Sufite 
Mohammedans among the tribes, he strove to combine all the man- 
hood of the Caucasus against their common enemy, the infidel 
Russians. Severely wounded in 1831, he became, on his complete 
recovery three years later, " imam " or head of the sect, and then 
devoted some years to the organisation of military force under a 
theocratic system of rule by which he was absolute spiritual and 
temporal head of a number of tribes. A guerilla-warfare of sur- 
prises and ambuscades was carried on with great success, and 
many severe defeats were inflicted on the Russian forces. In 
1839 Shamyl's enemies surrounded a fortress where he was known 
to be, took it by storm, and put all the defenders to death, in order 
to be rid of their most dangerous foe, whose person was unknown to 
them. In a short time, however, having made his escape in some 
mysterious way, the fanatical hero was again preaching the "holy 
war," and the Russians were not only repulsed again and again with 
severe loss in attacks on his strongholds, but found their own territory 
invaded. It was, however, impossible to contend for ever against 
the military power of a foe that could, and did, employ hundreds of 
thousands of men in the struggle, by slow degrees seizing and main- 
taining strategic points, and making roads to the heart of the 
Caucasian fastnesses. In 1852 exhaustion began to be felt by 
the gallant mountaineers, and Shamyl, reduced more and more 



Russia 632 

to the defensive, became a prisoner in September, 1859, after 
being hunted in the mountains for several months, and a final 
struggle in which his last little band of 400 followers was reduced 
to about one-ninth of the number. Russian admiration for a most 
valorous opponent assigned Shamyl a residence in the interior of 
the country, with an ample pension. The great Caucasian warrior 
closed his life at Medina, in Arabia, in 187 1. It was only in 
the previous year that the Russian conquest of the Caucasus had 
been completed, and the last defenders of freedom slain, captured, 
or expelled. 

We turn now to deal with the fortunes of the hapless Polish 
subjects of Russia. The Congress of Vienna in 1815, assigning 
to Russia part of the original shares of Prussia and Austria, had 
made Poland, to the extent of over 220,500 square miles (as 
against 26,000 square miles in Prussian and 35,500 in Austrian 
Poland), a constitutional kingdom attached to Russia only by the 
bond of having the same sovereign, with a responsible ministry, 
a biennial parliament, a separate army, and a free press. This 
liberal system of rule was, however, soon violated by the rude, 
cruel, and energetic military commander the Grand-duke Con- 
stantine, brother of Alexander I., and in November, 1830, after 
the revolutionary movement in France, an insurrection began under 
the leadership of the military and university students at Warsaw. 
Joined by the Polish troops and the civilian population, the rebels, 
seizing the arsenal, drove out the grand-duke and his Russian 
supporters, and in January, 1831, established a provisional govern- 
ment under Prince Adam Czar tory ski. In a series of fierce 
engagements with Russian troops, the Poles at first had some 
success, but they were soon overpowered by superior forces under 
Marshal Paskevitch, a veteran of the great campaigns of 181 2 and 
1 8 14 against Napoleon, and a victorious commander in warfare 
with the Persians and the Turks. In September, 1831, Warsaw 
was captured, and Nicholas I. adopted the severest measures of 
punishment. Polish independence came to an end, and in 1832, 
with the annulling of the constitution, and the establishment of 
a strict censorship of the press, the country was declared to be a 
province of the Russian empire, with a separate administration 
under a viceroy. The cruel tsar caused the execution and flogging 
of many victims, with the banishment of others to Siberia, and the 
destruction of Polish nationality began in the suppression of the 
language for official purposes, and the exclusive employment of 



634 A History of the World 

Russians in civil posts. Early in 1855 the accession of Alex- 
ander II., on the death of his father Nicholas, brought back to 
Poland, by an amnesty, many of the exiles, and attempts were 
made to conciliate the people in restoring to Poles the tenure of 
public offices, making Polish the official language, and granting 
municipal government to Warsaw and other leading towns. No 
fitting response was made to this humane policy, and after attempts 
to assassinate high Russian officials, including two successive 
governors, General Luders and the emperor's brother, another 
Grand-duke Constantine, the last effort of Poland for freedom 
came in the insurrection of February, 1863. This struggle was, on 
the part of the Poles, a mere guerilla-warfare of peasants, with some 
slight successes for the rebels, but no great actions, and by March, 
1864, after much desultory conflict and great losses to the insurgents, 
the revolt was utterly crushed. The last remnant of Poland, as 
a separate nationality, then vanished. In 1868 the Polish pro- 
vince was fully incorporated with Russia, and the ten " govern- 
ments " of the territory were numbered with those of Russia in the 
proper sense. Education in the university and the public schools 
was henceforth conducted in the Russian language, and the ex- 
tinction of the Polish people, as a political body, was completed. 

Alexander II. (1855-1881) was a monarch whose reign must be 
regarded, especially in its earlier years, as forming a very memorable 
epoch of Russian history, one to be compared with those of Peter 
the Great and Catharine II. in its effect of raising Russia towards 
the level of west-European civilisation. Trained by a father 
who was little more than a military martinet, and overawed by 
his majestic, imposing presence, the young Alexander, showing 
no enthusiasm for soldiering, and displaying a kindly disposition 
regarded as unsuitable for one who was to become an autocratic 
ruler, was declared by Nicholas to be "an old woman who would 
do nothing great." He had not been reigning long before he gave 
evidence of the courage, energy, and persevering resolution that 
enabled him to execute reforms which his stern and strong-willed 
father, had he possessed the desire, would have shrunk from under- 
taking. Adopting the advanced utilitarian ideas of a class which 
probably included three-fourths of the educated people of the 
country, a class largely drawn from the ranks of the small landed 
proprietors and from the families of the village clergy, the emperor, 
after careful inquiry, and with a prudent restraint of extreme views, 
abolished in 1861 the serfdom of 23,000,000 peasants, transferring 



Russia 635 

them from the position of men subject to the arbitrary rule of 
irresponsible masters to that of a class of independent communal 
proprietors. This great reform was followed by that of the judicial 
and administrative systems, with a new penal code, and a simpler 
civil and criminal procedure ; local self-government in which each 
province and district had its elective assembly with a restricted right 
of taxation ; a new rural and municipal police under the control of 
the Minister of the Interior ; and new municipal institutions with 
some approach to modern ideas of civic equality. The establishment 
of trial by jury, the publicity of proceedings in the law-courts, and the 
abolition of legal corporal punishment (the terrible knout or whip) 
marked a great advance for Russia, and it was chiefly in political 
affairs and with regard to political offences, still left in the hands of 
the department of State Police, that the former odious tyranny was 
maintained. 

It is remarkable that the reign of this reforming monarch was the 
period during which revolutionary discontent amongst an educated 
class, notably men and women proficient in physical science, assumed 
the terrible form of Nihilism. In 1866 the tsar's life was attempted, 
and in later years most daring plots assailed him and leading officials. 
In February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Kharkoff, con- 
demned by the secret tribunal of the Nihilists, was shot, and in 
April of the same year the tsar was fired at in St. Petersburg 
with four shots from a revolver. A state of siege was pro- 
claimed in the capital and other great towns, and the most rigid 
measures of repression and precaution were vainly adopted. Two 
successive chiefs of the secret police, Generals TrepofT and 
Mesentzof, had been murdered in St. Petersburg in 1878; their 
successor, General Drenteln, was attacked by assassins in the 
following year, and many other victims of less note perished in 
the ranks of the army and bureaucracy. It was the avowed in- 
tention of the revolutionists to strike terror by these crimes into 
the hearts of their rulers, and the secret organisation became known 
as that of the "Terrorists." In December, 1879, tne i r deadly 
hostility to the tsar adopted a new method of attack, and one of 
the vans of a train preceding that by which the emperor was 
returning from a visit to the south was blown to pieces by a mine 
laid under the rails and fired from a neighbouring house. On 
that occasion his life was saved by a mistake, but the deliberation 
and ferocity of this plot, followed by a revolutionary proclamation, 
in which the tsar was denounced as " the personification of a 



6^6 A History of the World 

despicable despotism, of all that is cowardly and sanguinary," renewed 
the panic of the spring of the year, and caused more arrests and 
increased vigilance on the part of the police. No precautions were 
able to hinder the Terrorists from attempts of even greater audacity 
than any hitherto displayed, and they seemed to have the aid of 
treachery in the very household of the ruler when, in February, 1880, 
the dining-hall of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, with the 
table laid for a numerous party of guests including the tsar's son- 
in-law the duke of Edinburgh, was wrecked by an explosion in the 
cellars beneath. The lives of the whole party of guests were saved 
only by a combination of accidents causing a few minutes' delay in 
taking their seats for dinner. Several soldiers in the intervening 
guard-room lost their lives. The Terrorists at last attained their 
evil object on March 13th, 1881. In a street of the capital, on his 
return to the Winter Palace from a review, Alexander II. was killed 
by the explosion of a dynamite-bomb. Two assassins were engaged, 
the first of whom flung a shell which injured some of the guards 
preceding the carriage, and caused the emperor to alight. The 
second then advanced and threw his bomb at the feet of his 
victim, shattering his legs and the lower part of his body, and 
causing death in a few hours from loss of blood and shock to the 
system. 

The murdered tsar was succeeded by his son as Alexander III., 
whose lot as a ruler of a great world-wide realm had "fallen on evil 
days." The cause of freedom in Russia was not furthered by the 
outrageous violence of revolutionary crime. The new emperor, 
naturally appalled by his father's fate, made himself a state-prisoner 
in the palace of Gatchina, near the capital, and adopted a reactionary 
system of rule. Restrictions were laid upon the self-government 
granted to the provinces in the last reign, and the landowning 
nobles had increased authority through the abolition of the "justices 
of the peace." Literature and education were subjected to a 
rigorous censorship and supervision, and an odious tyranny was 
displayed in the " Russification " of Finland, with the curtailment 
of her ancient autonomy, and in a cruel persecution of the Jews 
by which Russia lost, through voluntary exile, many thousands of 
her best subjects. An alliance between republican France and the 
chief autocratic European country has been attended with effusive 
demonstrations of friendship which have attracted the amused 
attention of the world. On the death of the tsar in June, 1894, he 
was succeeded by his son as Nicholas II. 



Russia 637 

The latter half of the 19th century has seen a rapid extension of 
Russian dominion in central Asia, and an advance to the borders of 
Afghanistan, with the marking of a definite frontier, in the interests 
of peace between Russia and Great Britain, between the territories 
of the tsar and the Afghan ruler. The region called Turkestan 
("the country of the Turks") stretches eastward from the Caspian 
Sea to beyond no° east longitude, and from Siberia southwards 
to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. It is divided into western and 
eastern portions by the lofty tableland called Pamir ("roof of the 
world "), with a mean height of 13,000 feet above sea-leve!, 
uniting the western ends of the Himalayas and the Tian-Shan 
Mountains, and both with the Hindu-Kush. We have here to 
deal mainly with western Turkestan, consisting of the great hollow 
plain of the Caspian and Aral Seas, and of the hilly and well- 
watered regions among the branches of the Tian-Shan and Hindu- 
Kush. Deserts of loose shifting sand contain oases with a clay 
subsoil ; there are strips of fertile land along the rivers, the chief 
of which are the Syr-Daria (the ancient Jaxartes) and the Amu- 
Daria (Oxus), and there are some very fertile valleys in the eastern 
districts. The people, mainly composed of Uzbegs (Turco-Tartars) 
and Turkomans, of kindred race, are chiefly Mohammedans in 
religion, and live by tillage and pastoral industry, with some 
manufactures of cotton, silk, woollen, and linen goods. There may 
be 5,000,000 in all, dwelling in a territory exceeding 500,000 
square miles in area. We have seen in part of this region the 
ancient Persians, the founders of the chief cities ; then the Mace- 
donian Greeks led by Alexander ; and finally the Parthians. It 
was then overrun in succession by Turkish tribes ; by Arabs, in the 
8th century of the Christian era ; and by the Mongol hordes under 
Genghis Khan. Turkestan became the centre of the vast empire 
of Timour the Tartar (Tamerlane) in the 14th century, a dominion 
stretching from the Hellespont to China, and from Moscow to the 
Ganges. That time was for Turkestan a golden age of imported 
civilisation, but under Tamerlane's successors the empire was 
broken up, and in the 17th and 18th centuries we find independent 
khanates or kingdoms at Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand. In the 
first half of the 19th century there was much warfare between the 
khanates, and of marauding Turkomans, who were great brigands 
and man-stealers, with Persia and Afghanistan. In i860 these 
people severely repulsed a large Persian force, capturing 30 guns and 
15,000 men. In 1839 tne tsar Nicholas I. vainly attempted to 



638 A History of the World 

conquer Khiva, and further Russian attempts were postponed 
for many years. In 1865 Russian forces took Tashkend and 
Khokand, and three years later, after warfare in which the emir of 
Bokhara was severely defeated, the important city of Samarkand 
fell to Russian rule. In 1869 and 1871 Russia erected forts on the 
south-eastern shores of the Caspian, and renewed her attacks on 
Turkestan from this fresh base of operations. In June, 1873, 
Khiva was occupied after a most arduous march of troops in five 
columns across the desert, and a large part of the khan's territory 
on the right bank of the Amu-Daria was incorporated with the 
Russian empire. In 1875 and 1876 the rest of the Khivan land 
was absorbed, and Russian ambition turned next to the Tekke- 
Turkomans of the Akhal oasis, a 300-mile strip of well-watered 
garden-ground rich in corn and maize, cotton and wool, containing 
the finest horses of all Turkestan, and great herds and flocks of 
cattle, camels, and sheep. The inhabitants exceeded 120,000, 
under the lordship of the khan of Merv. The men were warriors 
of a high class, raiding the Russian and Persian borders, and 
victorious, in 1855 and 1861, over Khivan and Persian hosts. In 
1878 a Russian expedition utterly failed from heat, fatigue, and 
disease, and in the following year, under like difficulties, and after 
severe conflict with the Turkomans, a much larger force was 
compelled to retire in disgrace from the fortress called Geok Tepe, 
pursued by Tekke horsemen even to the shores of the Caspian. 
The dashing General Skobeleff, a famous soldier of the recent 
Russo-Turkish war, was appointed commander of the troops sent 
to retrieve this disaster. With careful preparation, this brave and 
able man, assisted by a new railway, advanced into the Akhal 
country, and, after a regular siege of " parallels " and bombardment, 
took Geok Tepe by storm, with great loss to the Turkomans, in 
January, 1881. Merv became Russian in 1883, and the conquerors 
have since strengthened their hold on their central Asian possessions 
by the construction of a railway-line from the Caspian to the Oxus, 
and thence to Samarkand. 

Chapter VIII. — Russia and Turkey; the Eastern 
Question ; the New Balkan States. 

As regards Turkey, we have seen her loss of Greece in the reign of 
the able and energetic Mahmiid II., who reigned from 1808 to 1839, 
and the advance of the Russian border to the Pruth, by the Peace of 
Bucharest, in 18 12. This monarch, in pursuit of internal reform, 



Russia and Turkey 639 

made an end, by a general massacre in June, 1826, of the dangerous 
Janissaries, and he then organised his army on the European system. 
In the war with Russia in 1828-29, there were alternations of success, 
hut the Russian general Diebitsch, in 1829, captured Silistria, crossed 
the Balkans, and reached Adrianople, and the able Paskevitch, in 
Asia, took Kars and Erzeroum. The Peace of Adrianople restored 
most of the conquered territory to Turkey, but Russia retained much 
of the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and acquired a " protectorate " 
over Wallachia and Moldavia. The revolt of Mehemet Ali, Pasha 
of Egypt, brought his troops through Asia Minor to within 120 miles 
of the Bosphorus, and the Ottoman government, appealing for aid 
to Russia, had to see her ancient foe's troops encamped at Scutari. 
Mehemet Ali's forces were withdrawn, and Turkey, in the Treaty of 
Hunkiar-Skelessi, in 1833, undertook to close the Dardanelles against 
the armed ships of all nations except Russia. Henceforth the 
history of Turkey becomes a part of the great " Eastern Question " 
which has for over half a century troubled the diplomatists and the 
peace of Europe. That question means, in its essence, the disposal 
of the territories of the effete empire whose record has long been that 
of decrepitude and decay, save only in the element of military force 
to the maintenance of which all else is sacrificed in a chaos of general 
misrule, attended by occasional ferocious outbursts of Mohammedan 
fanaticism directed against Christian subjects provoked by tyranny 
to open or secret discontent. In the northern provinces, Bulgaria, 
Servia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, with Wallachia and Moldavia, the 
bulk of the Porte's subjects consisted of adherents of the Greek 
Church. This fact afforded Russia a constant excuse for interference 
in the internal affairs of Turkey, and her intrigues and aggressions 
have been due to something more than an ordinary national desire 
for aggrandisement. Religious fanaticism has for centuries caused 
Russians to aim at the possession of Constantinople, the sacred city 
whence they received their particular form of Christianity, the spot 
where they desire to replace the crescent by the cross on the Mosque 
of St. Sophia. The sympathy of race, in the Panslavism of the 
great northern empire, with the largely Sclavonic people of European 
Turkey, has furnished another impulse in the same direction, and it 
is only the jealousy of the other great Powers that has hitherto 
prevented Russia from attaining the main object of her ambition. 
The Russian has, moreover, a hereditary hatred of the Tartar race 
who held sway for two centuries in the old " Muscovy," and the 
Tartar and the Turk are closely akin in blood. 
42 



640 A History of the World 

In 1841 the jealousy of the Powers took an active form, and the 
Treaty of London provided that the Dardanelles should be closed 
against all ships of war while Turkey was at peace. At this time 
the Sultan was Mahmud's son Abdul-Mejid (1839-61), under whom 
the ambitious plans of the emperor Nicholas, seeking to give effect 
to Russian aspirations, brought about the Crimean War with events 
familiar to all readers of British history. The Russian invasion in 
Europe totally failed, brilliant victories being won on the Danube by 
Turkish troops, and the Russian forces being repulsed with enormous 
loss at the siege of Silistria. In Asia, Kars.was overcome by famine, 
after the failure of a great Russian assault. In the Crimea, the 
victories of Alma and Inkermann were followed by the long and 
memorable siege of Sebastopol, ending in the capture of the fortress 
by the allied French and British forces in September, 1855. In 
March, 1856, the Peace of Paris restored to Turkey the command 
of the Danubian mouths ; ended the Russian " protectorate " over 
the Christians in Turkey and the Danubian principalities (Moldavia 
and Wallachia) ; restored Kars to Turkey ; and bound Russia not 
to maintain any naval arsenals in the Black Sea, or any naval force 
superior to that of Turkey. In 1861 Abdul-Mejid, who had made 
much pretence of " reforms " in his treatment of Christians and had 
then become noted for his wantonly profuse expenditure on barbaric 
splendour of life, was succeeded by his brother Abdul-Aziz. In 
1866 Wallachia and Moldavia, expelling their ruler Prince Couza, 
an immoral and tyrannous personage, assumed virtual independence 
as " Roumania " under their chosen hereditary Prince Charles of 
Hohenzollern. In 1870 the main achievement of the Crimean War, 
as against the development of Russian naval power in southern 
waters, was rendered nugatory by that Power's taking advantage of 
the outbreak of the Franco-German war to declare that she would 
no longer be bound by that article of the Treaty of Paris (1856) 
which neutralised the Black Sea. Great Britain was not prepared 
to go to war, single-handed, to enforce the article, and in March, 1871, 
a Conference made an end of the clauses which shut the Euxine to 
ships of war belonging to Turkey and Russia. The fleets of other 
nations were still excluded by the closure of the Dardanelles and 
Bosphorus in time of peace. It has thus come to pass that 
Sebastopol, captured and destroyed at a vast expenditure of human 
life and treasure, is again a great naval arsenal and fortress, a standing 
menace to Turkey in conjunction with Russia's new powerful Black 
Sea fleet/ 



Russia and Turkey 641 

The perennial misgovernment exercised by Turkey over all her 
subjects, Moslem and Christian alike, soon' caused another war 
with Russia. In 1875 a revolt began in Herzegovina, supported 
by Servia, Bosnia, and Montenegro^ and the rebels were aided by 
Russian volunteers with the connivance of their government. The 
Turkish troops were at first unable to suppress the outbreak, and 
the fury of Moslem fanaticism expressed itself in the murder of the 
German and French consuls in Salonica. A "palace-revolution" 
in the Turkish capital caused the deposition and death of Sultan 
Abdul-Aziz, succeeded by Murad V., who was deposed, as mentally 
incapable, in August, 1876, and replaced by his brother Abdul- 
Hamid II., the astute, miserable, blood-stained monster, justly 
branded as "the Great Assassin," who still (in 1898) defiles the 
world by his existence in a seat of irresponsible power. In the 
summer of 1876 the whole civilised world, an expression from 
the scope of which British and other sympathisers with Turkey must 
be carefully excluded, was horrified by the atrocious cruelties per- 
petrated by the Turkish irregular troops after the suppression of 
a revolt in Bulgaria. Popular feeling was so strongly aroused in 
Russia that the tsar (Alexander II.) was impelled to invade Turkey 
in April, 1877, and the latest Russo-Turkish war began. The 
Russian troops were at first miserably handled, and severe repulses, 
with great loss of life, were incurred in vain assaults on Plevna, but 
the subsequent generalship of Todleben, the hero of the defence of 
Sebastopol, Skobeleff, and Gourko caused the capture of the Plevna 
garrison, the victorious passage of the Balkans, and an advance 
almost to the gates of Constantinople in the early days of 1878. In 
Asia, Kars was taken by storm in November, 1877. The Congress 
of Berlin, sitting in June and July, 1878, restored peace on the 
terms of independence for Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, the 
first and last becoming " kingdoms " ; the cession of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina to Austria ; the creation of the independent principality 
of Bulgaria in the territory between trie Danube and the Balkans ; 
the establishment of southern Bulgaria as the province of Eastern 
Roumelia, under the suzerainty of the Sultan, with a Christian 
governor-general and a separate militia ; and the reduction of the 
Sultan's territory in Europe to the land south of the Balkans which 
represents the ancient Thrace, Macedonia, part of Epirus, and 
Illyria, between the Black Sea and the Adriatic. In Asia, Russia 
retained Kars and the port of Batoum, the latter on the express 
stipulation that it should not be made into a naval station, but 



642 A History of the World 

should remain a purely open commercial port. With her usual 
shameless perfidy, Russia has now withdrawn the privileges of 
Batoum as a free port, and converted the place into another 
Sebastopol. 

The history of the new Balkan States may be briefly dealt with. 
In 1885 Servia, ruled by King Milan I., under a constitution 
including a freely elected national assembly, wantonly attacked her 
neighbour Bulgaria, but the invaders were decisively defeated by 
the invaded at the battles of Slivnitza and Pirot, and the Servian 
state was saved only by Austrian intervention. In 1889 King 
Milan abdicated in favour of his young son Alexander, a lad of 13 
years of age, who was installed as sovereign under a " Council of 
Regents." Bulgaria, on becoming an independent principality, 
passed under the constitutional rule of the freely elected Prince 
Alexander of Battenberg, a scion of the Ducal House of Hesse by 
a morganatic marriage, and a near kinsman of the tsar. He dis- 
played great gallantry and skill in leading his troops in the brief 
war with Servia, and gained the warm affection of his subjects. 
A kind of union with Eastern Roumelia took place in 1886 in the 
Prince's recognition by the Porte as governor of that province. In 
the summer of that year Alexander was kidnapped by Russian 
partisans in his palace at Sofia, and sent to Austria, whence he soon 
returned to receive an enthusiastic welcome from his Bulgarians 
The insolent hostility of the tsar then induced the prince to abdicate, 
and a provisional government, firmly maintaining the national cause 
against Russian menaces, held rule until the acceptance of the 
throne, on the choice of the regency, in 1887, by Prince Ferdinand 
of Coburg. 

Roumania, whose troops fought with the utmost gallantry 
alongside the Russians at Plevna, became a kingdom in 1881 
under Charles of Hohenzollern, and the country has since become 
flourishing, with a very large and thrifty body of peasant proprietors 
of land. There is a limited monarchy with two Houses of Parliament, 
and Roumania is now freed from the evil effect of both Russian 
and Turkish influence. 

The latest stage of European history has presented the disgrace- 
ful spectacle of the six great nations styled "the Powers" in a 
position of impotence to deal with the Eastern Question in any 
way that shall do justice to nationalities suffering under the atrocious 
misrule of Turkey. The governments of Russia and Germany 
have been conspicuous in preventing the adoption of measures 



The Eastern Question 643 

which should fitly assert the dignity and rights of Christendom and 
civilisation against the Moslem tyrant. Abdul-Hamid, the energetic, 
relentless, vigilant, and consistent enemy of Christians, has caused 
and permitted, in his Asiatic dominions, slaughter and devastation 
far exceeding any beheld in those much-enduring countries since 
the days of Othman and Bajazet. In the Treaty of Berlin, Armenia 
came under the protection of Great Britain, and that fact alone made 
her wretched people a special mark for the suspicion and hatred 
of a remorseless despot and a fanatical populace. Nothing could 
have been more unfortunate for the Armenians than the assumption 
by Great Britain of a vague form of protectorate which, for the first 
time, excited political hopes and, perhaps, even revolutionary 
dreams, in the minds of those who trusted to the Western Power. 
The independence of Bulgaria had bitterly wounded Turkey. The 
alleged ingratitude of Bulgaria had enraged the Russian govern- 
ment, and the two former foes, Russia and Turkey, became combined, 
the one by the basest inaction, the other by the most ruffianly 
violence, in hastening the ruin of the Armenian people. The 
Armenians, forsooth, not being adherents of the Greek Church, 
could claim no Christian sympathy from holy and orthodox Russia, 
the only Power in a position to save them by prompt military action, 
and the Sultan, secured against restraint and punishment by the 
mutual jealousies of the great European nations, revelled in the 
opportunity of insulting and defying the best public feeling of 
the country, Great Britain, whose arms and diplomacy, in the 
Crimean War, and after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, had 
twice saved Turkey from extinction as a European power. It was 
in 1894 and 1895 that the Armenians, long exposed to the ravages 
of Kurdish and Circassian raiders, were subjected to the deliberate 
system of massacre inaugurated by the Turkish Sultan, with the loss 
of tens of thousands of lives, and the carrying-off of countless women 
and girls into a slavery worse than death. Many meetings were 
held in the British Isles to express the utmost indignation of humane 
people, but British diplomacy, unable to face the contingency of a 
general European war, unable to induce any action on the part of 
Russia, a country now callous to all considerations save her own 
interest, has made patriotic Britons look back with bitter regret to 
the days of Palmerston and Canning. 



Section IV. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 
HISTORY OF ASIA. 



Chapter I. — China and Japan. 

The historical interest and importance of those remote Eastern 
peoples, the Chinese and the Japanese, begin only when, emerging 
from an exclusive and non-progressive condition, they came into 
contact with Europeans. The vast Chinese empire, embracing in 
its broadest sense Manchuria, Mongolia, eastern Turkestan, and 
the practically independent Tibet, with an area exceeding 4,000,000 
square miles, has China proper as its centre of power and population, 
a territory variously estimated as having an area of 1,250,000 to 
1,500,000 square miles, and a population from 350,000,000 to 
400,000,000. The people were known to the ancients as the Seres, 
the Serial of the geographer Ptolemy, in the 2nd century a.d., mean- 
ing north-west China, and adjacent parts of Tibet and Chinese Tartary. 
In mediaeval times the country was called in Europe "Cathay," a 
Tartar name. Mountainous and hilly in the south, with a vast 
alluvial plain and delta in the north-east, the territory has a soil of 
unsurpassed fertility, with a temperate climate, and was well suited 
to the early and rapid growth in numbers of the Mongolian people 
who inhabit it, superior in strength to most Asiatics, diligent and 
enduring in toil, skilful in tillage. Of the early so-called history, and 
of the primitive religion, of the Chinese, we can here say nothing. 
The famous philosopher Confucius (K'ung-Fu-tsze in Chinese, or, 
" the Master, Kung ") founded a new moral system in the 6th century 
B.C., embracing the " Golden Rule " contained in the words " What 
you do not wish done to yourself, do not to others." He is still 
regarded by the Chinese, and twice yearly worshipped by the 
emperor, as "the Perfect Sage." It is obvious that his great rule 

644 



China 645 

of moral conduct involves benevolence, honesty, humanity, and 
justice. He also taught that there was one God and one emperor, 
with the kings of other nations as his vassals ; that ancestors should 
be reverenced, all old usages and customs observed, old age held 
in high esteem, and children strictly disciplined. In the 3rd century 
B.C. the famous Great Wall, the largest artificial structure in the 
world, carried for 1,400 miles over height and hollow, reaching in 
one place the level of 5,000 feet above the sea, was erected of earth, 
gravel, brick, and stone, as a barrier to protect the northern frontier 
from inroads of barbarous tribes. About the time of Confucius 
the ethical teacher Lao-tsze flourished, his name meaning " the old 
philosopher." He was the author of a system called Taoism, "the 
way of living so as to develop the nature of man in the highest 
and purest form." In the 1st century a.d. this became a sort of 
religion, and its founder was deified, the new system being really 
one of gross and mystical superstition. At the same time Buddhism 
was introduced from India into China, where it still exists in a 
degraded form, and has many adherents. Confucianism is held by 
the upper or learned class, but the people in general have no special 
creed, practising a form of Buddhism, or a mixture of the three 
religions, with the old ancestor and spirit worship prevalent among 
the lower classes. The Chinese are domesticated, hard-working, 
frugal, courteous, noted for filial piety, respectful to age. On the 
other hand, the mass of the people are freely addicted to lying, 
treachery, and gambling. The form of government is an absolute 
despotism vested in the emperor as supreme civil ruler and head 
of religion. The business of the state is carried on by a council 
of chief ministers and seven boards, with a Board of General 
Supervision or Censorate reporting to the emperor.- Official station, 
in the lack of any nobility in the proper sense, is due entirely to 
success in the competitive examinations which have existed for 
many centuries, and have furnished China, in the persons of the 
literati or learned men, with its gentry, governors of provinces, 
judges, magistrates, ministers of state, and diplomatic body. 

Chinese ingenuity enabled the people, at a very early period, 
to invent the arts of paper-making, printing from wooden blocks, 
the manufacture of the porcelain which has given the name of 
"China" to every kind of fine and beautiful earthenware, the 
weaving of exquisite silken robes, the making of lacquered ware, 
and the delicate carving of ivory, tortoiseshell, wood, and mother- 
of-pearl. Of science, in the true sense, they knew nothing until 



646 A History of the World 

they derived it from foreign sources in recent times, and their 
language, destitute of an alphabet, and having each word represented 
by a single character or symbol, is in a high degree clumsy and 
cumbersome. Isolation, self-conceit, devotion to ancestral ways of 
thought and action, have been the persistent bane of a country 
which has only adopted European methods, in military and naval 
affairs, in the most recent times. In 1898 an intelligent traveller 
could truly report that Pekin, the capital, was the dirtiest of towns, 
where no pavement existed for foot-passengers, and the carts in the 
crowded streets passed along deep ruts. The people, at a most 
critical time for the empire, showed the most apathetic disregard 
for public affairs, except the officials, of whom a large number were 
being paid from the secret service fund of Russia. " Nothing 
could," he writes, " convey a better idea of the utter conservatism 
and childishness of the Chinese than two sights which I witnessed 
yesterday. The first was a body of soldiers engaged in practising 
with bows and arrows, and the other was the picture of a huge 
cannon painted on a canvas screening a part of the town wall, 
with the object of frightening assailants." It must be stated, 
however, that the Chinese army has of late much improved in 
discipline and training under British and other European officers, 
and that cannons and rifles of recent patterns have been imported, 
while the former ridiculous and inefficient navy has been replaced 
by men-of-war from British and German shipyards. 

Passing over various so-called " brilliant periods " of Chinese 
history, when we hear of the empire being " consolidated," and of 
literature having a " Golden Age," and of valiant warriors and wise 
rulers who held the Tatars (Tartars) in check, we find these for- 
midable foes, in the 8th century of the Christian era, making 
constant inroads, sometimes resisted with success, often stayed by 
the payment of tribute. By the middle of the 12th century Tartars 
had come down as far as the Yang-tse-Kiang river. Early in»the 
13th century Mongols under Genghis Khan took Pekin and annexed 
some of the northern provinces, and in 1259 the famous Kublai 
Khan, a nephew of Genghis, became master of the whole northern 
territory and founded the Mongol dynasty of China, which was in 
power until 1368. It was in the time of Kublai, who reigned until 
1294, that the Venetian traveller Marco Polo visited the country, 
with his father and uncle, who had previously been there. Marco 
gained the special favour of the great Khan from his quickness 
in acquiring the language and customs of the Mongols, and was 



China 647 

employed by him in frequent missions to neighbouring rulers. 
He resided in China for 17 years, until 1292, and wrote a valuable 
and interesting extant work on what he had seen. In the course 
of the 1 6th century we find Portuguese merchants settling at Macao; 
the coasts of China ravaged by Japanese ships ; further trouble from 
the Tartars ; and an attempt of the Japanese to subdue Corea. 
Early in the 17th century the Dutch and the Spaniards appeared 
in China, and in 16 16 Manchoo Tartars invaded the country, and 
effected its conquest within the spacS of 30 years. In 1644 the 
existing Manchoo dynasty was founded in the person of the 
emperor Shun-che, with the capture of Nanking. There was then 
warfare in which Chinese resistance was completely overcome, 
and the introduction of the shaved head and pigtail which are the 
symbols of Tartar sovereignty. Under an emperor named Kang-he 
(1661-1721) Tibet and Formosa were subdued, and war was waged 
against Russia. French and English were at this time settled at 
Canton, the latter being traders connected with the East India 
Company. The first direct intercourse between the British and 
Chinese governments came in the embassy of Lord Macartney in 
1792. This able and experienced man, of Scottish descent, born 
near Belfast, had been a special envoy to Russia, Chief-Secretary for 
Ireland, governor of Grenada, and governor of Madras, and had 
been offered, but declined, the high post of Governor-General of 
India. Raised to the peerage for his eminent public services, 
Macartney, dispatched by George III. as ambassador, had several 
interviews with the emperor, but no result came from the mission. 
In 18 1 6 Lord Amherst, afterwards Governor-General of India, went 
as ambassador seeking permission for a British minister to reside at 
Pekin, with the opening of ports on the northern coast to British 
trade. This British noble and envoy was not even admitted to 
the august presence of the Chinese ruler because he very properly 
refused to perform the ceremony of " Kotow " or prostration at 
the emperor's feet. He returned to England with a letter to the 
Prince-Regent, in which were the words : " I have sent thine 
ambassadors back to their own country without punishing them 
for the high crime they have committed " (in approaching me). 
The time was rapidly drawing near when the rulers of China, in 
their besotted self-conceit, were to be, justly or unjustly, somewhat 
rudely shaken from their attitude of isolation as "superior persons." 

The East India Company had long traded with Canton for tea, 
silk, and other Chinese exports, and had introduced, before the close 



648 A History of the World 

of the 1 8th century, a traffic in opium, as an export from India to 
China, which was very profitable. During the period when the 
China trade was solely in the hands of the Company's agents, 
the imperial edicts forbidding the importation of the drug were 
quietly evaded by bribing the Chinese customs-officers. The Act 
of 1833, ending the exclusive privilege of the Company in the China 
trade, was soon the cause of serious trouble. The new British 
officials, in support of the illicit traders in opium, openly encouraged 
the traffic ; and the court of'Pekin, in 1838, sent to Canton, with 
extraordinary powers, the once famous " Commissioner Lin." In 
1.839 this official caused the seizure of many thousand chests of 
opium, of enormous value, in the Canton river and elsewhere, with 
the destruction of the contents. British subjects residing in the 
" Factory " or trading-station, at Canton, under the charge of 
Captain Elliot, the British superintendent, were surrounded and 
menaced by Chinese troops, and the refusal of compensation to 
the traders caused the contest known as " the Opium War." In 
January, 1840, an imperial edict forbade all trade with the British, 
and our reply consisted in the storming of forts on the Canton river, 
the destruction of war-junks, the seizure of Hong-Kong, the silencing 
of the Bogue forts, the dispatch of an army from India under the 
veteran Sir Hugh Gough, and the capture of Amoy, Ningpo, Shanghai, 
and Ching-Keang, operations attended with severe loss to the ill- 
armed Chinese forces. The Treaty of Nanking, in August, 1842, 
opened Canton, Amoy, Fuhchau (Foo-choo), Shanghai, and Ningpo 
to British trade ; ceded Hong-Kong ; paid a large indemnity to the 
opium-merchants and the British government ; established a regular 
tariff; and made an end of the absurd restrictions and pompous 
etiquette of Chinese usage in respect to official intercourse. Thus 
was Chinese exclusiveness broken down, and the opening of the 
northern ports to trade, at points of the coast nearer to the tea- 
growing districts, brought great profit to the Chinese growers, with 
Shanghai as one of the principal outlets for the ever-increasing 
export of the leaves to Great Britain. In 1844 China made 
commercial treaties with the United States and with France. In 
1850 the great rebellion broke out which became known as the 
" Tai-ping " revolt, because its leader Tien-teh (" celestial virtue "), 
announcing himself as a heaven-sent political and religious reformer, 
sought to dethrone the Manchoo dynasty, and to found, in his own 
person, that of Tai-ping or Universal Peace. For some years a 
horrible civil war went on, with the capture of Nanking and Shanghai 



China 649 

by the rebels in 1853. Two years later, an attempt on Pekin failed, 
and the insurgents were finally subdued by bodies of troops of 
various nationalities, commanded by an American adventurer called 
" General Ward," an able man who did good service to the 
imperialist cause until his death, in battle, in 1862, and especially 
by a great force organised and led by the famous British officer 
Colonel Charles (" Chinese ") Gordon, the subsequent victim of his 
own heroic rashness, and of official apathy, at Khartoum. In July, 
1864, Nanking was taken by the imperialists, and the remnant of 
the rebels melted away in the following year. 

In 1857 the seizure of a small vessel, the once famous lorcha 
Arrow, flying the British flag, and the refusal of an apology or 
reparation from the Chinese government, caused another war, in 
which both British and French forces took part. In 1857 the 
Chinese fleet was destroyed, and Canton was captured, and in June, 

1858, the Treaties of Tientsin, concluded with Great Britain, France, 
and the United States, made great concessions to their commerce, 
but a failure to carry out the treaties caused a renewal of warfare in 

1859. A" English naval force was repulsed with severe loss in an 
attack on the Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho river, but they 
were afterwards taken by British and French troops in a land-assault, 
and an advance was made on Pekin. The large Chinese army was 
routed, and the surrender of the capital was followed by the sacking 
and burning of a number of great buildings in a large park, collec- 
tively known as the emperor's " Summer Palace," in punishment for 
the treacherous seizure and murder of Mr. Bowlby, special corre- 
spondent of the Times, and some other British subjects, during the 
march on Pekin. In October, i860, the Treaty of Pekin ratified the 
former treaties, declared the toleration of Christianity, and arranged 
for a revised tariff, the payment of an indemnity, the residence of a 
British minister at Pekin, the admission of British subjects with 
passports to all parts of China, and -the opening of five fresh ports, 
including Formosa, Tientsin, and Haina i, to European trade. Thus 
was China at last laid open to the Western nations, and a very 
enlightened and excellent Chinese envoy, the late Marquis Tseng, 
was received at the chief European courts. The most recent events 
in China, in 1898, include the cession of ports to Russia, Germany, 
and Great Britain under circumstances not yet ripe for historical 
treatment. The war with Japan is treated in our account of that 
country. 

The island-empire of Japan, in the North Pacific, has an area 



650 A History of the World 

exceeding that of the British Isles by one-fifth, and a population 
about equal to that of Great Britain and Ireland, or nearly 40,000,000. 
With a wide range of temperature, a very varied vegetation, and a 
people skilled in cultivation of the soil, the country is rich in food- 
products, including tea, and in cotton and tobacco. The Japanese, 
chiefly Mongolian in race, are frugal, clever, persevering, brave, 
courteous, good-humoured, and frank, and they possess remarkable 
ingenuity in native and imitative manufactures — metal-work, mosaics, 
tortoiseshell, leather-work, wood-lacquering, paper-making, and textile 
fabrics. The popular religion is Buddhism ; and there are many 
devotees of Shintoism, a form of religion which includes the worship 
of heroes, emperors, and great men, and of certain natural forces and 
objects, with the sun-goddess as the chief divinity. With the origin 
and mythical period of the Japanese we here have no concern. The 
first trustworthy records begin with the 10th century a.d. The 
emperors, known as " Mikados," had by this time been compelled 
to share their power, under the system known as " the dual govern- 
ment," with an usurping military official, like the " Mayor of the 
Palace " in early French history, styled the Shogun or Tycoon. The 
Mikado, living behind a veil of formal etiquette, with a reverential 
regard for his office, was devoid of real power, which lay in the 
hands of certain energetic families holding the chief military com- 
mands. The system was, in fact, feudal, with a separation of state- 
offices into two sections, civil and military, each held by one group 
of noble families, a great predominance of power lying in the military 
element. The whole male population consisted of two classes — the 
agricultural, comprising all unfit for military service, and burdened 
with the annual payment of a part of the fruits of their toil to the 
military class ; and this latter body, including all the bravest and 
most intellectual men in the country, supported by the taxation 
above mentioned, and, to a large degree, able to devote themselves 
to literary pursuits. They formed the best element of a nation 
which, under the feudal nobles, suffered much from oppression and 
anarchy until a time beyond the middle of the 19th century. In 
the 1 2th century there was civil war between leading families; in 
the 13th an invading armada of the Mongol-Tartars from China 
was partly destroyed by a typhoon, and the survivors of the storm 
were defeated and massacred by the Japanese. In the 14th century 
we have more warfare between ambitious nobles, and the long 
contest between two rival Mikados styled " the War of the Chrysan- 
themums " from the display of that imperial emblem on each side. 



Japan 651 

At this time feudalism had become fully developed, and the 
land was divided among the soldiers of the Shogun (Tycoon) or 
military commander and ruler, from whom they held their estates 
as fiefs on condition of service in war. These military lords, or 
daimios, had vassals, holding lands as fiefs, of the agricultural and 
other classes, and the holders of civil offices, the Mikado and his 
court, sank to a low position, impoverished by the greed of the 
feudal lords who grasped most of the taxes. In the 15th and 16th 
centuries Japan was in a wretched condition of civil warfare of 
rival emperors and between ambitious nobles, and towards the end 
of the period we have . the Japanese invasion of Corea already 
recorded, and the persecution of Jesuit missionaries. About the 
middle of the 17th century, under a new dynasty of Shoguns (or 
Tycoons, " high princes "), we find the adoption of an exclusive 
system which shut Japan to all foreigners except the Chinese and 
the Dutch, who were allowed to trade at Nagasaki. A general 
persecution at this time effected the extirpation of Christianity. 

Japan became first known to Europe, under the name of Zipangu, 
through Marco Polo. In 1542 it was visited by the Portuguese, who 
carried on a lucrative trade until their final expulsion in 1640. In 
the 17th and 18th centuries much progress was made, through native 
energy and ability, in civilisation and material prosperity, and the 
population of the islands, in 1744, was found to exceed 26,000,000. 
We arrive at the middle of the 19th century before we find any 
startling change in the political and social condition of the people 
who had so long been living in the isolated state, according to their 
own proverb, of "frogs in a well." The class called samurai, or 
second order of vassals, to whom the great feudal nobles, or daimios, 
leased their farms in return for military service, had long been 
dissatisfied with the usurped power of the Shoguns (Tycoons), and 
the daimios were jealous of the long tenure of the Shogunate by the 
Tokugawa family, who had held it since 1603. An element of 
internal revolution was thus at work. At the same time, in 1854, 
Commodore Perry, of the United States, after a visit in the previous 
year, with four men-of-war, to the harbour of Yedo, induced the 
Shogun to conclude a treaty with the great republic of the West, con- 
ceding certain rights of trade to citizens of the States. In the same 
and the following year Great Britain and Russia made like treaties 
with Japan, and in 1858 Lord Elgin, after the Treaty of Tientsin 
with China, made arrangements with the Japanese ruler by which 
several ports, including Yokohama, Hakodate, and Nagasaki, were 



652 A History of the World 

opened to British trade, with consular agents, and a resident British 
diplomatist at Yedo. In the same year the United States, France, 
and Russia received like concessions by treaty with the Shogun. 
The Mikado and his court, with the conservative Japanese party, 
were incensed at these proceedings of the Shogun, and there was 
a deep-seated feeling of hostility towards foreigners. In i860 the 
first Japanese embassy to the United States was sent out by the 
prime minister, who paid the penalty in assassination. Civil 
dissensions arose, and a brief irregular war with Great Britain came 
through the murder, in September, 1862, of Mr. Richardson, a 
member of the British Embassy, who was attacked on the high- 
road by the retinue of a daimio, brother of the prince of Satsuma, one 
of the chief feudal nobles. The Shogun (or Tycoon), who was not 
responsible for this outrage, made a full apology, and paid a large 
sum in compensation, and Satsuma, who refused all redress, was 
brought to terms in August, 1863, by a British squadron which, in 
bombarding the forts at Kagosima, capital of Satsuma's province, 
almost destroyed the large wood-built town. 

At last the long-threatened revolution in Japan came to pass, and 
it was one of a very rapid and complete character. There had been 
further warfare with foreigners, in consequence of their somewhat 
lawless conduct in entering one of the forbidden ports after due 
warning, and being fired on by the Japanese forts. In 1863 and 
1864 British, French, Dutch, and American vessels bombarded and 
destroyed the batteries at Shimonoseki, and a large indemnity was 
exacted. In 1867 a struggle between the Shogun, with his partisans, 
and some of the chief daimios, ended in the resignation of the last 
military ruler (Shogun or Tycoon), and the "dual government" 
was abolished in the restoration of full power to the Mikado, or 
emperor, as both the temporal and spiritual head of the realm. 
A revolt occurred, with severe fighting, but by June, 1869, the 
imperialist cause prevailed, and the Mikado transferred his residence 
from Kioto to Yedo (Jeddo), changing that city's name to Tokio 
(" eastern capital "). This large and splendid place, the centre of 
Japanese literary, commercial, and political activity, now contains 
about 1,500,000 inhabitants. A complete change of policy followed. 
The life of the emperor and the court had henceforth a publicity 
in complete contrast to the olden seclusion. The former treaties 
with foreign nations were ratified, and embassies were dispatched 
to European capitals and to Washington. The daimios resigned 
their fiefs in exchange for state-pensions, and a system of consti- 



Japan 653 

tutional and administrative government, on the European model, 
was established. Western civilisation was fully embraced, and 
hundreds of young Japanese men were sent to Europe for education. 
A new code of criminal law ; a government postal system ; railroads 
and telegraphs ; the adoption of the European (Gregorian) calendar ; 
a Tokio university ; female education ; modern military drill, tactics, 
and arms ; and a modern navy, gave ample token, along with the 
establishment, in 1889, of a Parliament of two Houses, that Japan 
had, with startling energy, entered on a new path of progress to 
enlightenment, prosperity, and power. The chamber of peers is 
in advance of the British, in being partly hereditary, partly elective, 
partly nominated by the Mikado. The representative chamber is 
chosen by men of 25 years of age and upwards, paying taxes to 
a moderate annual amount. The cabinet or ministry includes 
officials, under the premier, presiding over foreign affairs, finance, 
war, the navy, education, religion, justice, public works, and the 
imperial household. In 1874 an expedition to Formosa avenged 
the murder of Japanese sailors on that island. In 1887 the 
Japanese imports from Great Britain and her colonies had reached 
a value of nearly ^£4,000,000 sterling, and the one thing needed to 
prove the completeness of Japan's conversion to European ways 
was a demonstration of her strength in the modern style of warfare. 
In August, 1894, a dispute concerning Corean affairs caused Japan 
to declare war against China. The first success was won by the 
Japanese army, which defeated the Chinese forces with great loss, 
in September, at Ping Yang, in Corea. On the same day the 
Chinese were worsted in a great naval action in Corea Bay. On 
October 24th the Japanese troops crossed the Yalu river and 
entered Chinese territory, and early in November Kinchow and 
Talienwan were captured by the invaders, who followed this up 
by the occupation of Port Arthur. Early in February, 1895, the 
greater portion of the Chinese fleet, attempting to escape from 
Wei-hai-wei, nearly opposite to Port Arthur and on the southern 
side of the entrance to the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, was sunk by the 
Japanese fleet stationed outside the harbour. This succession of 
severe blows, showing the decisive superiority of the reforming 
Japanese to the conservative Chinamen, in warfare both by sea 
and land, caused the Chinese government to sue for peace, and 
on March 16th, 1895, a treaty ceded Formosa and the adjacent 
Pescadores isles to Japan, and undertook the payment of a large 
indemnity. 



654 A History of the World 



Chapter II. — India. 

We must here deal in the most summary fashion with a subject 
needing volumes for detailed treatment. One of the greatest 
achievements in the world's history is shown in the conquest of the 
vast and populous territory of India and Burma by Great Britain, 
and the subjection of about 300,000,000 people, alien in their 
races, languages, customs, and religious beliefs, to the mild, just, 
peaceful, uniform, and, assuredly, beneficial sway of less than as 
many thousands of European soldiers and civilians. The ancestors 
of those Europeans were, at a remote date, prior to historical 
records, cognate in blood with the Aryan forefathers of many 
millions of the people of India, and this return to Asia, in 
conquering strength, of the flower of the Aryan race which came 
forth, as we have seen, thousands of years ago, from Asiatic uplands 
into southern and western Europe, is in itself a fact of the utmost 
interest. In early pre-historic times India was inhabited by 
aboriginal, non-Aryan peoples, some millions of whose descendants 
still exist, under the name of Santals, Bhils, Gonds, and by other 
designations, in the wilder hill-country. The beginnings of civilisa- 
tion came with the influx of the Aryan race into the Punjab and the 
valley of the Ganges, perhaps between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The 
sacred verse of the books called Vedas, and the two great epic 
poems, the Maha Bharata and the Ra.7na.yana, written in the now 
dead Sanskrit language, show us these Hindus, as they are called 
from Hind, the basin of the river Indus, as a people worshipping 
gods who represented the powers of nature — the sky, the rain- 
vapour, fire, storm — with a chief deity styled Dyaus-pitar (Diespiter 
or Jupiter, in Latin), "the father of heaven." The native tribes 
were either enslaved or driven away to the mountains by the new- 
comers, who in course of time pushed southwards along the coasts of 
the Deccan and reached Ceylon. Many despotic kingdoms were 
founded, and there was a great development of royal power and priestly 
influence, the Brahmans, or priestly class, being the highest of the four 
castes, strictly separated in social matters. The old religion was 
superseded by the Brahmanic, a trinitarian system in which Brahma 
figures as the Creator, / 'ishnu as the Preserver, and Siva as both the 
Destroyer and the Reproducer, the philosophy of this last invention 
embodying the idea that death begins another life. The Brahmans 
were the possessors of all philosophy and learning, in which 



India 655 

scientific grammar, and profound and ingenious speculation, were 
conspicuous, and the Indian astronomers, after learning from the 
ancient Greeks and improving on their acquirements, became fairly 
proficient, and teachers of the Arabs, in the 8th and 9th centuries of 
our era. Algebra and arithmetic (the decimal system) had their 
origin in India. In medical science the Brahman doctors showed 
some proficiency at an early date, but in the later times of Hinduism, 
after the 9th century of the Christian era, superstition forbade the 
Brahmans to touch blood, and surgical practice came to an end. 
In the 6th century B.C. a young prince named Gautama, leaving his 
father's court for an ascetic life in the jungle, became a religious 
reformer, and founded Buddhism, from his religious name Buddha, 
" the enlightened." Its morality was pure, and its ritual was simple 
and attractive in the offering of flowers, fruit, and incense, along with 
processional hymns and prayers. It was strongly antagonistic to 
Brahmanism in preaching the essential equality of all htfman beings. 
About the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when Buddhism had spread 
over northern India, it was adopted as the state-religion by a king 
of Behar, named Asoka, and until the end of the 8th century a.d. 
the two religions existed side by side. Then Buddhism began to 
suffer from a mysterious process of internal decay, so far as India 
was concerned, as well as from the active hostility of a Brahmanistic 
reaction, and by the end of the 9th century it had almost disappeared 
except in Kashmir and Ceylon, with an ample compensation of 
victory in other regions — Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Siam — now 
containing over 300,000,000 followers of the faith. 

In 327 B.C. India was brought into immediate contact with 
Europe by Alexander the Great's invasion of the Punjab, where he 
defeated a prince named Porus on the banks of the Hydaspes 
(Jhelum). Some cities were founded in the Punjab and Sind 
(Scinde), and a basis of Greek influence was laid. About 308 B.C. 
one of Alexander's successors, Seleucus Nicator, founder of the 
Syrian monarchy, was in alliance with a king of Behar named 
Chandra-gupta, and the Greek ambassador at his court, Megasthenes, 
gives us a description of the capital, Palimbothra (now Patna), and of 
the social system in his day. For many centuries after this date we 
have no records that are trustworthy in details. There were invaders 
of northern India vaguely described as " Scythians," in conflict with 
Indian monarchs at various times until the 6th century a.d., but no 
important effect was produced by these people, and the main fact is 
the firm establishment, on the decay of Buddhism, of the new form 
43 



656 A History of the World 

of Brahmanism called Hinduism, combining the old Vedic faith with 
Buddhism and with the ruder rites of the aboriginal peoples. It was 
the ingenious blending of religious elements that gave the reformed 
Brahmanism its permanent hold on the vast population of the 
peninsula. 

Mohammedan invaders appeared early in the 8th century, but 
their only conquest at that time was Sind (Scinde), which was again 
in Hindu hands early in the 9th century. About a.d. 1002 a 
Turkish conqueror, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, a small territory in 
Kabul, appeared at Peshawur with his fierce predatory horsemen, and 
after many inroads and retreats, in which Hindu temples were 
plundered and idols destroyed, he conquered the Punjab. The 
territory was held by many of his successors, but towards the end of 
the 1 2th century the Afghans of Ghor, now a ruined town near 
Herat, conquered Ghazni, and the first Mohammedan dynasty in 
India proper was founded at Lahore by a descendant of Mahmud. 
The Moslem afterwards became masters in northern India, driving 
the Hindu princes away to found new kingdoms in the forests 
and hills to the south. Behar and Bengal were subdued by the 
followers of the Arabian prophet, and in the 13th and part of 
the 14th centuries Mohammedan sultans were ruling at Delhi, and 
Mohammedan invaders made their way to the south. A confused 
period of warfare due to Hindu reaction and revolt furnishes horrible 
records of massacre, famine, anarchy, and misrule, and in 1398 a 
new terror came in the invasion of Timour the Tartar (Tamerlane), 
ruling at Samarkand, who swept down on the Punjab and Hindustan 
(the territory between the Punjab and the Nerbudda), and retired 
into central Asia with a great booty after a year of massacre and 
plunder. In southern India, during this time and until the middle 
of the 16th century, we find a powerful Hindu realm called Narsinha 
or Vijanayagar, with a capital still to be traced by extensive ruins in 
the Bellary district of Madras Presidency. This empire was destroyed 
by the defeat and death, in 1565, at the great battle of Talikot, on 
the right bank of the Kistna, of its sovereign at war with some allied 
Mohammedan rulers in the Deccan. 

A new phase of Indian history began with the advent of Mongol 
conquerors. Early in the 1 6th century Baber, a descendant of 
Tamerlane, was driven from Bokhara by Tartar invaders, and sub- 
dued an Afghan realm at Kabul. In 1526 this courageous, gay, 
and genial conqueror defeated and slew the Delhi sultan in the 
battle of Panipat, and in 1556 his grandson Akbar, in another fierce 



India 657 

action at the same Panipat, on the wide plain 50 miles north of 
Delhi, defeated the Afghans who had driven out the Mughals. 
He then founded the Mughal (Mogul) Empire in the days of 
Elizabeth, reigning from 1556 till 1605. His conquests gave him 
the historic title of " Akbar the Great," well earned by a combination 
of courage, energy, skill in diplomacy and war, wisdom, and 
humanity, and by religious tolerance unrivalled in Oriental records. 
Rajputana, Gujerat, Bengal, Kashmir, and Sind (Scinde) were sub- 
dued by his arms, and many petty Moslem states and Hindu rajas 
were either directly ruled or were influenced through friendly 
treatment and marriage-connections. Before the close of the 16th 
century, Akbar was master of all the territory to the north of the 
Vindhyas, and westwards to Kabul and Kandahar. Hindus and 
Mohammedans were both employed alike in civil and military posts, 
and the maintenance of two separate armies enabled this politic 
ruler to send Hindus against Mohammedan foes or rebels, and 
Mohammedans against Hindu rajas. A skilful organiser, Akbar 
divided his empire into provinces, each under its own governor ; 
settled the land, after survey and measurement, on a regular system 
for taxation by assessment according to produce ; and established 
an administration of justice and police in his capital ? Agra, and the 
chief towns. Towards the close of his reign the great Mughal 
sovereign failed in attempts at conquest in the Deccan. His son 
and successor, Sultan Jehangir, received a British envoy from 
James I. in the person of Sir Thomas Roe, who left a vivid 
description of the splendours of the court, and of the tyranny of 
the Oriental potentate. In 1627 Jehangir's son, Shah Jehan, began 
a reign of 30 years, during which Kandahar was finally lost to the 
Persians, and some Hindu kingdoms in the Deccan were subdued. 
The empire was at the height of its power and splendour, but an 
ominous sign of the future appeared in the attacks of the formidable 
Mahrattas, mixed in race, Hindus in religion, living in the northern 
part of the Ghats extending from Surat towards Goa. The founder 
of the political power of these fierce freebooters was an able man 
named Sivaji, commanding a force of mounted spearmen. Before 
parting with Shah Jehan, who was deposed by his son Aurangzeb 
in 1658, we may note his eminence as a builder. By him was 
founded the modern city of Delhi still called by Mohammedans 
" Shah Jehanabad " or " city of Shah Jehan," with its grand Jama 
Musjid, or Great Mosque, and he is immortal as the erector of the 
fine mosques at Agra, the Jama Musjid and the Moti-Musjid ("Pearl 



658 A History of the World 

Mosque "), and, especially, of the matchless Taj Mahal in the same 
city, a mausoleum dedicated to his favourite wife. 

Aurangzeb, who reigned from 1658 to 1707, made some con- 
quests towards the south, annexing Golconda and Bijapur, but he 
failed to subdue the confederate Mahrattas, who became the chief 
power in southern India. Early in the 18th century the Mahrattas 
were ruling from Poona to Tanjore, at Gwalior, in Gujerat, and in 
part of Berar. Their camp-fires were seen from the walls of Delhi ; 
their horsemen swept over the rice-fields of Bengal. A line of 
rulers called Peshwas, really hereditary ministers of state, headed 
the Mahratta confederacy, with Poona as their capital, and under 
their attacks province after province was lost to the Mughal empire. 
Viceroys revolted from the emperor, and before the middle of the 
1 8th century the Deccan had become independent under its former 
governor, the Nizam-ul-mulk (" regulator of the state "), and the 
Subahdar (viceroy) of Oudh practically defied his sovereign ruling 
at Delhi, while he maintained an .outward show of allegiance. From 
this time the Mughal emperors had but a shadow of power. A 
terrible blow was inflicted by a Persian invasion under Nadir Shah, 
who captured Delhi in 1739, and gave the place up to pillage for 
weeks, retiring with a booty worth many millions. This was followed 
by Afghan invasions between 1748 and 1761, during which time 
Delhi and northern India were ravaged, and the Mahrattas, in a 
third battle of Panipat, were routed with fearful slaughter by the 
Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah, in 1761. The power of the Peshwa 
at Poona rapidly declined, and the confederacy was broken up into 
five parts — the Peshwas, the Bhonslas of Nagpur, Sindhia of Gwalior, 
Holkar of Indore, and the Gaekwars of Baroda. The Mughal 
empire, as a political force, had come to an end, and the long 
struggle for the rule of India among Asiatic races — pre-Aryan, Aryan, 
Afghan, and Mughal — was to end in European supremacy. 

Portuguese rule in the East was founded by the famous Alfonso 
da Albuquerque, who was viceroy of the Indian possessions from 
1509 to 15 15, and built the city of Goa, on an island of the same 
name, about the middle of the western coast. Before 1550 the 
Portuguese were also established at Diu, off the coast of Gujerat ; 
at Cochin, in Malabar ; and at Bassein, northwards from Bombay. 
Christianity was introduced with its churches and priests, monasteries 
and monks, Jesuit missionaries and the Inquisition, and efforts at 
conversion were made by word of mouth and by the use of force. 
Cruelty and superstition had their usual effects ; the natives did not 



India 659 

embrace the exotic faith, and the Portuguese had to encounter many 
attacks on their "factories" and forts. After enjoying a monopoly 
of the Indian trade during the 16th century, Portugal, conquered 
by Spain in her European possessions, began to decline in India 
before the Dutch and the English. In 1632 Hugh, a settlement not 
far from the site of Calcutta, was conquered by Shah Jehan, with the 
carrying off of the people as slaves to Agra. At the present time 
Portugal retains only Goa, Daman, and Diu, all on the west coast. 
During the 17th century the Dutch were foremost in maritime 
and commercial affairs, and their East India Company, founded in 
1602, had trading settlements in India and Ceylon, but lost all their 
posts on the mainland in the course of the 18th century. 

It was on the last day of the 16th century that some London 
merchants, jealous of Dutch enterprise in the Eastern trade, were 
incorporated, by a charter of Elizabeth, as the East India Company, 
and that famous body began its long and remarkable career, extend- 
ing over more than two centuries and a half, during which they 
advanced from the position of mere merchants on Indian soil, 
existing there by permission of native potentates, to that of holders 
of great territorial sovereignty, makers of war and peace, wielders of 
naval and military force, possessors of a vast revenue and of very 
extensive and important patronage. Between 161 2 and 16 16 the 
Company, by the grant of the Mughal emperor Jehangir, established 
" factories " or trading-posts at Surat, Ahmedabad, and Cambay, on 
the west, with the privilege of introducing their merchandise at a 
fixed rate of duty. In 1641, by permission of native princes, a 
foothold was obtained on the Coromandel (south-eastern) coast, and 
Fort St. George arose on the site of the future great city of Madras. 
In 1654 this post became the seat of the first "Presidency," under 
a President and Council appointed by the Board of Directors in 
London. In 1668 the island of Bombay, part of the dowry of 
Catharine of Braganza, was granted by her husband, Charles II., to 
the Company, with new privileges, and the place soon became of 
importance as a centre of commerce. Under Louis XIV., the 
French appeared on the scene with an East India Company, having 
a " factory " at Chandemagore on the Hugh, a branch of the 
Ganges, and another at Pondicherri on the coast of the Carnatic. 
The English Company, in 1691, met this by erecting Fort St. David, 
south of Pondicherri. Seven years later the second English 
Presidency had its origin in Bengal, with the purchase of some land 
from the emperor Aurangzeb. Fort William, on the Hugh, gave 



660 A. History of the World 

strength and importance to Calcutta, which became, in 1707, the 
seat of government for the Presidency, and new " factories " or 
trade-depots arose at Dacca, Patna, and Cossimbazar in Bengal. In 
1 708 Bombay became the third Presidency. 

It was the decay of the Mughal empire, and French rivalry, that 
caused the British East India Company to become, at first almost in 
spite of themselves, employers of warlike forces and conquerors of 
territory, instead of mere peaceful traders. In the early years of the 
1 8th century the three Presidencies had, purely for self-defence, 
small garrisons of British soldiers, and native troops called Sipahis. 
War between France and Great Britain in Europe (the " Austrian 
Succession"), beginning in 1741, soon caused collision in Asia, 
and hostilities began in southern India, where the Mahrattas were 
fighting against the Nizam, Mohammedan ruler of the Deccan, the 
country between the Nerbudda and the Kistna. The British, 
in 1746, lost Fort St. George by surrender, after bombardment, to 
La Bourdonnais, who came against it from Mauritius with a fleet 
and army, and then the able, crafty, and ambitious Dupleix, French 
governor of Pondicherri, intervened. He had formed the design 
of expelling the British from India, and of bringing the whole 
peninsula under subjection to France, and it was his genius which 
conceived the plan of effecting conquest by means of native troops 
(Sipahis) drilled, trained, and armed in the European fashion. The 
details of the struggle which ensued are well known from British 
history, and need not be given here. Dupleix declined to ratify 
the terms made by La Bourdonnais, and carried off the English 
governor and his officers to Pondicherri, but they were released, and 
the Madras Presidency was recovered, in 1748, under the Treaty 
of Aixda-Chapelle. The French and English, apart from hostilities 
in Europe, during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), engaged in 
warfare as supporters of rival native princes in southern India. 
British supremacy was due to the genius and courage of Robert 
Clive, one of the greatest of English commanders. His daring 
seizure and splendid defence of Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic ; 
his victory of Plassey over the young Nawab (Nabob) of Bengal, 
Suraj-ud-Daula (Surajah Dowlah), avenging the hideous tragedy of the 
" Black Hole of Calcutta " ; his rule in Bengal ; the victories of 
Sir Eyre Coote in southern India; the skill of Major Monro, in 
the battle of Buxar, east of Benares, saving Bengal for the Company 
by defeat of the emperor's forces : these were the causes of French 
discomfiture in India, and of the rise of the Company's empire, 



India 66 1 

in 1765, in their appointment, by the Mughal ruler, as virtual 
governors of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, a territory twice as large 
as the British Isles. 

A period of misrule under the Company's officials followed the 
departure of Give from India in 1767, and the natives of Bengal 
suffered much from extortion and other oppressive proceedings. 
Financial ruin for the Company was in prospect, and in 1772, with 
;£i, 000,000 sterling of arrears, the Company borrowed largely from 
the Bank of England, and also applied to Parliament for aid. This 
was granted, on conditions which changed the method of rule in 
India. The Regulating Act of 1773 established a new Supreme 
Court at Calcutta, with a chief-justice and three judges nominated 
by the Crown, and appointed a Governor-General of Bengal, Behar, 
and Orissa, with a salary of ^25,000 a year, assisted by four 
highly paid councillors. The other Presidencies were made 
subordinate to his rule. The first Governor-General, probably the 
greatest, in ability and achievements, of a long and illustrious roll of 
high officials in India, was Warren Hastings, already " President " 
at Calcutta, whose Indian career had begun with a clerkship in 
Bengal, in 1749. In 1765 he had risen to the post of member 
of council at Madras, and he became governor of Bengal in 1772. 
During his 13 years' tenure of power until 1785, this famous ruler 
committed some high-handed acts, due to zeal for the Company's 
and his country's interests, but he has lately been freed, after 
careful investigation of the records of the time, from the chief 
calumnious charges brought against him by Burke in the " impeach- 
ment," charges based upon the false representations of the 
malignant Sir Philip Francis, Hastings' colleague in council, and 
repeated, in good faith, with lack of full knowledge of the facts, by 
Macaulay in his brilliant essay. It was Hastings who founded 
British rule on a firm basis in India, and, in Macaulay 's words, 
"preserved and extended an empire; founded a polity; 
administered government and war with more than the capacity of 
Richelieu." Amongst other administrative reforms, the collection 
of the revenues was vested solely in English civil servants ; the 
native ryots, or cultivators, were protected from oppression. Civil 
and criminal tribunals, in which British officials were supreme, were 
created in country-districts, curtailing the powers of corrupt native 
courts. The Company's servants were checked in various corrupt 
and oppressive practices, including monopolies in salt, tobacco, 
rice, and other articles of trade. A great and growing revenue 



662 A History of the World 

arose in the manufacture of salt and opium, now brought under the 
control of the government. The country was cleared of bands of 
roving robbers or " dacoits." 

In foreign affairs, the great Governor-General had an ample 
field for the display of his abilities and strength of character. One 
of the most formidable of foes had appeared in southern India. 
This was Haidar (Hyder) Ali, a man of rare energy, daring, and 
skill, who became ruler of Mysore in 1762. The country, under 
his sway, was enriched by trade and tillage, and increased in terri- 
tory through conquests effected by a reorganised military force. 
The British dominions were attacked, and the government of 
Madras, in 1769, was forced into an alliance binding them to 
help Haidar against all foes. In 1770 the Madras council declined 
to aid him against the invasion of a great Mahratta army, and the 
ruler of Mysore, who never forgave the English for what he deemed 
to be a cowardly breach of faith, was deprived of nearly half his 
territory. The crisis came in India in 1778, when war with France 
began through her aid to the revolted British colonies in North 
America. French agents, intriguing with the Peshwa, the Mahratta 
ruler, at Poona, strove to form an alliance against British power, 
and Hastings took prompt measures to meet the danger. Chander- 
nagore and Pondicherri were taken, and an expedition was sent 
from Bombay against the Mahrattas. Ill-success at first attended 
our arms, but a Bengal army restored the position, and in T780 
Ahmedabad and Bassein were taken ; the powerful Mahratta chiefs, 
Holkar and Scindia, were twice defeated ; and another force from 
Bengal took by escalade the great rock-fortress of Gwalior, deemed 
by all men in India to be impregnable. In March, 1781, Scindia 
was again defeated, and no more present trouble from the Mahrattas 
was to be feared. A greater task was to be faced in the south. 
The indomitable Haidar was again in the field, in alliance with 
the Mahrattas, and in 1780 he was carrying fire and sword through 
British territory in the Carnatic with an army trained by French 
officers. Sir Hector Monro, the victor of Buxar in 1764, was forced 
to retreat, with the loss of his guns, and Haidar then seized Arcot. 
Hastings at once dispatched from Calcutta Sir Eyre Coote, the 
old hero of Wandewash in 1760, with a small, well-equipped force 
of British and Sipahis. In July, 1781, Coote gained, south of 
Pondicherri, the decisive victory of Porto Novo, or Cuddalore, 
defeating 80,000 men under Haidar with a tenth of that number, 
the victors losing only 300 men. In August a less brilliant success 



India 663 

was gained at Pollilore, and in June, 1782, Coote again worsted 
the fierce old Mussulman, then in his 80th year, at Arnee, south- 
west of Madras. In October Coote was forced to return to 
Calcutta from ill-health, but the death of Haidar two months later 
made an end for the time of all danger in southern India. The 
Mysore sovereign, succumbing to old age, expressed his regret 
that he had ever attacked a nation that no defeats could ever 
compel to yield, and left a charge to his son and successor Tippoo 
to make peace with the British on any terms. Tippoo, however, 
continued the war, with some slight success, but the Peace of 
Versailles, in 1783, deprived him of his French contingent under 
the able Bussy, and in March, 1784, when a British army had 
drawn close to Tippoo's capital, Seringapatam, a peace was con- 
cluded which left the British masters in the Carnatic, with Tippoo 
ruling in Mysore. Hastings had made terms with the Mahrattas 
in western and central India, restoring all his conquests except 
Gwalior, but binding them to friendship and intercourse with the 
British alone among Europeans. 

In 1784 William Pitt's "India Act" gave the home-government 
its first real power in Indian affairs. A " Board of Control " in 
London, consisting of six privy-councillors nominated by the Crown, 
and always including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and one 
of the Secretaries of State, was headed by a President, having all 
the actual authority, a member of either the Commons or the 
Lords, and responsible to Parliament and the Crown, who gained 
through him direct knowledge of Indian affairs. This new system, 
which continued until the extinction of the Company as a political 
body, left to the Directors their power over patronage and com- 
mercial business, but deprived them and the Court of Proprietors 
of supreme authority in civil and military affairs. In February, 
1785, Warren Hastings returned to England, where he received 
a vote of thanks from the Directors. Three years later, his famous 
trial, or impeachment by the Commons before the Lords, began 
in Westminster Hall, to end in April, 1795, with acquittal on 
every charge. More than 20 years later, in advanced old age, 
Hastings went to his grave " in peace, after so many troubles, in 
honour, after so much obloquy." The eloquence of Burke, Fox, 
Pitt, and Sheridan had been launched in vain against the man 
defended in a masterly style by Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, 
and, in 1794, by the valuable evidence of Lord Cornwallis, who, 
succeeding the accused as Governor-General, had learned by a long 



664 A History of the World 

experience the facts and conditions of British rule in the Asiatic 
dominions. 

The rule of Cornwallis, from 1786 to 1793, was made notable by 
his complete reform of the Company's civil service, and by his per- 
manent settlement of the system of raising the land-revenue in 
Bengal. The native zemindars, or revenue-farmers, now received in 
perpetual tenure the lands on which they had previously been only 
collectors of the tax, and they undertook henceforth to pay that 
annual sum to the government. The Company's officials were 
deprived of all irregular sources of income, receiving henceforth 
salaries ample for their maintenance, and judicial officers ceased to 
be employed in the collection of revenue. It is obvious that these 
changes were all in the -direction of pure and non-oppressive rule. 
In war with Tippoo, from 1789 to 1792, Lord Cornwallis took the 
field, in alliance with the Peshwa of the Mahrattas, and with the 
Nizam of Hyderabad, and the storming of Bangalore was followed 
by a march on Seringapatam, the defeat of Tippoo, and his retreat 
under the guns of his great fortress and capital. Cornwallis, short 
of supplies, was then compelled to retire, but in January, 1792, with 
reinforcements from home raising his force to 20,000 men, and 
aided by the Nizam and the Mahrattas, the Governor-General again 
marched on Seringapatam, stormed three strong lines of advanced 
works mounting 300 guns, and forced his foe within the walls. 
The ruler of Mysore had then to yield half his territory for equal 
division among the three allies ; to pay ^£3, 000,000 sterling as a 
war-indemnity; and to deliver up his two sons as hostages. 

Lord Mornington, better known as the Marquis Wellesley, was 
Governor-General from 1798 to 1805, an d under him, through great 
ability in council and in arms, much was done to extend British 
power and influence in India. Himself a man of brilliant parts and 
energetic character, the ruler was aided by his younger and greater 
brother, Arthur Wellesley, then colonel of the 33rd regiment, who 
first displayed on Indian soil the qualities which afterwards won 
him undying fame as duke of Wellington. There was a formidable 
league of native states against the British in central and southern 
India. The Peshwa at Poona had become a mere instrument in the 
hands of Scindia, the actual head of the Mahratta powers. The 
restless Tippoo, eager for revenge, was in alliance with Napoleon, and 
the native forces were trained and commanded by French officers. 
The British element in the governor-general's army, reduced 
through the requirements of European warfare, was not ready for 



India 665 

the field in the great coming struggle, and the Company's finances 
were in a poor way. Panic arose at Madras and Calcutta, but the 
two Wellesleys faced the position with combined courage and wisdom. 
Diplomacy staved off the outbreak of war while our preparations 
were being made. The Nizam of the Deccan was seduced from the 
French to the British cause. In March, 1799, Mysore was invaded 
by 40,000 British and Sipahis, under General Harris and Sir David 
Baird, and they were joined by the Nizam's troops, to which Colonel 
Wellesley's regiment was attached. On May 4th, after some 
previous fighting, Seringapatam was stormed in brilliant style, and 
the brave Tippoo's body was found among the slain. All his terri- 
tories were divided amongst the British, the Nizam, and a descendant 
of the old ruling house, displaced by Haidar. There were thus 
added to the British territories 20,000 square miles in southern 
India, including the coast of Canara, the formidable passes of the 
Ghats, leading into Mysore, and the city of Seringapatam. Colonel 
Wellesley, as governor, was engaged for some years in organising, 
with consummate skill, the civil and military*administration of the 
new province. In 1800, under the "subsidiary system" steadily 
carried out by Lord Wellesley, by which a military force, under 
British command, was maintained at the expense of a native ruler, 
and the control of state-affairs lay with a British " Resident," the 
Nizam ceded all his Mysore territories in exchange for British pro- 
tection and aid. In 1801 the Nabob of Arcot, the Subahdar 
(viceroy) of Oudh, and the Peshwa became " protected allies " in 
this fashion, one which had then and afterwards a vast effect in the 
extension of British influence in India. The next task of the 
Governor-General was that of dealing with the Mahrattas aroused 
against him by French influence. The five Mahratta chiefs, including 
Scindia and Holkar, controlled a population of 40,000,000 in the 
rich provinces extending southwards from Delhi to the Krishna, and 
from the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Cambay. They could place 
in the field 300,000 men, including 100,000 horse. In September 
and November, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley's brilliant victories at 
Assaye and Argaum shattered the power of the Mahrattas, and the 
strong fortresses of Ahmednuggur, east of Bombay, x\seerghur, and 
Burhampoor were taken. A treaty concluded in December made 
Scindia and the Raja of Berar dependent allies on the system 
above described, and they agreed to exclude from their territories 
all non-British Europeans. Meanwhile, General Lake had been 
doing good work against the same foes in northern India. In 



666 A History of the World 

September, 1803, the fortress of Alighur was stormed. Agra had 
already yielded on the first fire of our siege-batteries. Delhi was 
taken after a great defeat of Scindia's troops on the banks of the 
Jumna. Lake, in November, won his peerage" by the great victory 
of Laswari, near Agra. Delhi, Agra, and other provinces were 
ceded, and British influence became finally predominant in the great 
peninsula. In 1804 and 1805 there was some turn of the tide in 
warfare against Holkar and a vast force of ferocious freebooters 
called Pindarees. Lord Lake was victorious in the field, but he 
failed to capture, after five separate assaults, the immensely strong 
fortress of Bhurtpore. Our power was, however, too strongly estab- 
lished to be seriously shaken, and in December, 1805, Holkar made 
peace on the usual terms of excluding the French from his dominions. 
The Mahratta power was broken, though it was not yet wholly 
subdued, under Lord Wellesley"s administration, our rule being 
advanced far from Calcutta towards the north-west. Bengal and 
Madras Presidencies were united by the annexation of Cuttack, 
and the western seaboard was in British possession. This great 
Governor-General had also raised British influence by his steady 
assumption that British supremacy in India, and not mere trade, 
with a good dividend for the Company's shareholders, was the main 
reason of our presence in a region where we had committed to our 
charge the task of securing the happiness of many millions of people 
by permanent improvements of the territory, by the development of 
natural resources, and by a vigorous and pure system of rule. He 
first taught the civil servants of the Company to regard themselves in 
their proper light as magistrates, judges, ambassadors, and rulers of 
provinces, men invested with high, responsible, and serious functions. 
Under the earl of Minto, who was in power from 1807 to 18 13, 
British diplomacy went beyond the borders of the Indian Empire in 
missions to the Shah of Persia and the Amir of Kabul, and friendly 
relations were established with Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh 
kingdom, afterwards famous as the " Lion of the Punjab," the Sutlej 
being accepted as the southern boundary of his dominions. On the 
renewal of the Company's charter in 1813, for the period of 20 years, 
a material change was made in their commercial position, by the 
throwing open of the trade to India in favour of all British subjects. 
At the same time, the territorial and commercial departments of 
affairs were separated, and the Crown was empowered to recognise 
Christianity in India by the appointment of a bishop with three 
archdeacons, to be paid from the funds of the Company. Under 



India 667 

Lord Moira (marquis of Hastings), Governor-General from 1814 to 
1823, important warlike events occurred. ^The brave, lithe, active 
Ghoorkhas (Gurkhas) of Nipal (Nepaul), now so valuable in our 
Indian army, were beaten after fierce fighting in 18 15 and 1816, 
and some of their territory was annexed. In the latter year 
the troublesome Pindaree freebooters of central India invaded 
our territory, west of Madras, and did much damage. They were 
found to be acting in secret alliance with the Mahratta princes, and 
the Governor-General, on special instructions from home, adopted 
vigorous measures. In September, 181 7, he took the field, with Sir 
John Malcolm, in great force, and in a few months the Pindarees 
were utterly destroyed or finally dispersed, hunted down at last to 
ruin. The Mahrattas, under Holkar, were routed at Maheidpoor, 
north-west of Indore, by Malcolm, and the Mahratta power was 
suppressed, with great enlargement of the Bombay Presidency. 

Under Lord Amherst (1823-1828) British arms were carried 
beyond the Bay of Bengal. The Burmese, a warlike people of 
Mongolian race, had founded, before the middle of the 18th century, 
the kingdoms of Siam, Pegu, Ava, Aracan, and others, on the penin- 
sula between the Bengal and China seas. The modern empire of 
Burma was established by an able warrior named Alompra at the 
time when Clive was winning his victories in Bengal. Many years 
later, the British and Burmese frontiers, ever advancing, the one 
from the Ganges, the other from the Irawaddi, came into contact, 
and war ensued in 1823 owing to Burmese insolence and aggression. 
In April, 1824, the Bengal army embarked for and captured Rangoon, 
and for three months, in the great pagoda and the smaller temples, 
the captors repulsed all attacks made by a vast Burmese force. 
In December the enemy were finally driven off into the jungle after 
a week's severe fighting. In February, 1825, General Campbell pro- 
ceeded, by land and water, up the Irawaddi, and the British shells 
and rockets soon gave command of the whole river. Prome was 
occupied in April, and then came rest during the rainy season. 
More battles, with rout to the Burmese, followed, and early in 1826, 
after further fighting on our march to Ava, the arrogant " Lord of 
the White Elephant " succumbed. A treaty gave us possession of 
Assam, Aracan, Tenasserim, and other territory; conceded the 
residence of a British minister at Ava, the capital ; and opened the 
Burmese dominions to trading British subjects. The contest was 
remarkable for the courage and endurance displayed by the British 
troops and their Sipahi comrades under the most formidable 



668 A History of the World 

difficulties and dangers due to climate, country, and hosts of 
brave well-armed foes. In this war steam-ships were for the first 
time employed. 

In January, 1826, the capture of Bhurtpore by Lord Combermere, 
formerly Sir Stapleton Cotton, a famous cavalry-officer in the Penin- 
sular War, atoned for the failures of Lord Lake, and made a great 
impression on the native mind. The siege-guns made some 
breaches in the thick mud-walls, and an angle of the fortress was 
blown out by the explosion of an enormous mine. The place was 
then stormed in the usual way, and the destruction of the works 
once more showed the natives of India that nothing could resist the 
countrymen of Coote and Give. The rule of Lord William Bentinck 
(1828- 1 835) was ennobled by successful efforts in the cause of 
humanity. During a wise, upright, and paternal administration, the 
custom of sati (suttee), or widow-burning, was abolished ; the secret 
society of robbers and assassins known as Thugs was suppressed ; 
European education, with the aid of Macaulay, a member of Council 
at Calcutta, was introduced ; the freedom of the press was maintained ; 
and many judicial, financial, and administrative reforms were effected. 
It was at this time that Macaulay — orator, essayist, poet, historian, 
jurist in one — had the chief part in framing the Criminal Code 
adopted 30 years later with eminent success in the whole of our 
Indian dominions. In 1833 the renewal of the Company's charter 
for 20 years was attended by the opening of the China trade. Their 
commercial monopoly in the East thus came to an end. At the 
same time, Europeans were freely admitted to India, and no native, 
or subject of the Crown in the country, was excluded from office by 
religion, colour, descent, or place of birth. Slavery was at once 
mitigated, and very soon abolished. The North-Western Provinces 
were separated from Bengal, and placed in charge of a lieutenant- 
governor. 

The administration of Lord Auckland (1 836-1 842) was marked 
by the great disaster and disgrace in Afghanistan due to unwise 
interference in the internal affairs of that turbulent country, and 
then to the imbecility and positive cowardice of some of the civil 
officials and military commanders. Few particulars can here be 
given. After an occupation of Kabul from August, 1839, to the end 
of 1 84 1, the place was evacuated in the depth of winter, and during 
the retreat towards India, in the early days of January, 1842, the 
military force of 4,500 British and Sipahi troops, with 12,000 camp- 
followers all perished (save a small party of officers, ladies, and 



India 669 

children who oecame prisoners and were afterwards rescued) from 
the enemy's attacks, fatigue, and cold in the Khoord-Kabul and 
Jugdulluck passes. On January 13th Dr. Brydon, the sole survivor 
except the above, reached Jelalabad, clinging exhausted to his 
staggering pony's neck. Under competent leadership, both at the 
outset and the close of this first Afghan war, our arms won due 
credit. Ghazni was stormed in July, 1839, Havelock and Outram 
being among the officers in the invading army. Jelalabad, during 
the last months of 1841, was gallantly held by Sir Robert Sale. 
Ghazni was retaken by the Afghans after the retreat from Kabul, 
but Kandahar was well maintained against all attacks by General 
Nott. Early in 1842 Lord Auckland was replaced by Lord Ellen- 
borough, and then General Pollock, forcing his way through the 
Khyber Pass, with the storming of the heights on both sides, reached 
Kabul, along with Nott's army from Kandahar, in September, 1842, 
and left his mark there in the utter destruction of the great bazaar, 
a splendid building. Ghazni had been retaken, and the troops 
evacuated the country after so far vindicating the honour of our 
arms. The annexation of the province of Sind (Scinde) in 1843, 
after brilliant victories at Meanee and Hyderabad, was due to Sir 
Charles Napier, a Peninsular veteran. In a governorship of four 
years' duration the conqueror did something to make amends for 
our somewhat lawless aggression by the development of the resources 
of the country, the construction of great public works, and the 
establishment of a beneficial system of rule. A revival of Mahratta 
power was finally crushed in December, 1843, by Sir Hugh Gough, 
accompanied by Lord Ellenborough, in the great battle of Maharaj- 
poor, near Gwalior, and by the rout of another Mahratta force, on 
the same day, at Punniar. A British governor ruled in Gwalior, 
and the Mahrattas never again broke the peace in India. 

Under the rule of Sir Henry (Viscount) Hardinge (1844-1848), 
a Peninsular veteran, occurred the first Sikh war, a contest with 
the bravest and best-trained soldiers ever encountered by our forces 
in India, men whose descendants are now the most loyal and 
efficient supporters of our rule in their own country and in our East 
African territories. The Sikhs are almost a unique instance of a 
nation sprung from a religious sect, one founded early in the 16th 
century by a pious Hindoo named Nanak Shah, a native of the 
province of Lahore. His faith was monotheistic, his life pure, his 
teaching benevolent, elevating, and free from fanaticism. After his 
death Nanak's writings were collected into a Sikh " Bible," and 



670 A History of the World 

persecution by Brahmanical Hindus and by Mohammedans soon 
turned his followers into warriors defending their creed, their honour, 
and their lives. A great ruler, legislator, and commander named 
Govind Singh, who died in 1708, was the founder of the Sikh state, 
with abolition of caste, and equality of rights for all subjects. After 
his death the Mohammedans in the Punjab prevailed for a time, but 
the Sikhs, refusing to renounce their faith and practice, made their 
way to mountain-refuges, and in the middle of the 18th century, 
during the anarchy which followed Nadir Shah's invasion, they came 
forth from their seclusion in conquering strength, and subdued the 
province of Lahore. They were ultimately united, after an interval 
of civil strife, under the rule of the famous Ranjit Singh, whose 
realm was the one great power in India beyond the range of British 
sway and influence. On his death in 1839 the court of Lahore 
became a scene of strife between rival ministers, generals, and queens. 
The one solid centre of power in the Punjab was the army of 
125,000 men, a truly formidable force, full of warlike ardour and 
religious zeal, drilled by French officers, and provided with some 
hundreds of heavy cannon, cast in British foundries, and served by 
steady, well-trained gunners. This body of soldiers, in a fit of 
arrogance, got rid of their French generals, Court and Avitabile, and 
appointed officers under the control of small committees of privates. 
The Sikh minister at Lahore, Lai Singh, and the commander, Tej 
Singh, in regard for their own safety, turned the arms of these 
fierce warriors against the British dominions, which were thought to 
be an easy prey after the disaster in Afghanistan. In December, 
1845, a Sikh army of 50,000 men, with 100 guns of large calibre, 
crossed the Sutlej into British territory. The campaign of eight weeks' 
duration included four battles, all severe, and in one instance, that of 
Ferozeshah, perilously near a defeat for our forces. On December 
18th the enemy were repulsed at Mudki, south-east of Lahore, where 
the British commander, Sir Robert Sale, to the great grief of his 
comrades and his country's loss, received a mortal wound. On the 
21st, Hardinge, serving as a volunteer second-in-command under Sir 
Hugh Gough, took part in the fearful struggle at Ferozeshah, where 
the enemy's strong lines of works were, with great loss, only partly 
captured on the first day. On the second day, at the bayonet's point, 
the work was being finished, when a fresh Sikh army appeared on 
the field, and destruction seemed imminent for our men. A flank 
movement of our cavalry fortunately caused a panic and the retreat 
of the enemy. A few days later, at Aliwal, near Mudki, in another 



India 671 

fortified position, the Sikhs were smartly beaten by Sir Harry Smith, 
who stormed their camp, took all the guns and stores, and drove the 
enemy beyond the Sutlej. At Sobraon, on that river, on February 
10th, 1846, the united forces of Gough and Smith, with heavy guns 
from the Delhi arsenal, won a decisive victory. The Sikh works 
were stormed, and the breaking of the boat-bridge in the enemy's 
rear, during their retreat, caused heavy loss. Their army was 
lessened by 13,000 men, and about 70 guns were taken. Ten days 
later the Sikh capital, Lahore, was entered by the victors, and the 
young Raja, Dhulip Singh, made peace with the cession of the 
eastern Punjab, and admitted a British Resident to Lahore. 

Lord Dalhousie (1848-1856) was one of the greatest of Indian 
rulers, a man full of energy, insight, courage, and power to influence 
his subordinates in carrying out his policy. His great career in the 
East was marked by a series of enforced and peaceful annexations ; 
by the execution of great public works ; and by administrative 
changes which amounted to the construction of a new Indian 
empire. He really laid down his life in the work, and left behind 
him an India started on a new path of progress towards a higher 
degree of civilisation. A second Sikh war arose through troubles 
due to mutinous Sikh troops at the fortress-town of Mooltan. In 
November, 1848, Lord Gough took the field with 20,000 men and 
nearly 100 guns, and his rash generalship, which ever trusted to 
the " cold steel " rather than to cautious tactics and the use of 
artillery to save the lives of brave infantry, caused severe and need- 
less loss. A check was incurred at Ramnuggur, on the Chenab, 
in an attack on strong entrenchments, on November 22nd, but 
renewed efforts drove away the Sikhs, and they were defeated ten 
days later in a battle of some detached forces. In January, 1849, 
Mooltan, after severe bombardment and the explosion of the chief 
magazine, was stormed by the British troops under General Whish, 
and then, on January 13th, came our virtual defeat at Chillianwallah, 
on the left bank of the Jhelum, near the scene of Alexander's battle. 
The whole Sikh army was strongly entrenched, and Gough, annoyed 
by the Sikh guns when his troops arrived before the works after a 
long march, made an immediate attack. Our men were driven 
back in confusion, and two cavalry-regiments, one British, one of 
Bengal, fairly " bolted," the former, it is believed, through a mistaken 
bugle-sound, the latter in sheer panic. The whole loss to our 
forces exceeded 2,000 men ; the Sikhs, on the following day, retired 
unmolested. On February 20th, after Gough, unknown to himself, 
44 



672 A History of the World 

had been superseded by orders issued in London, the hot-headed 
Irish hero, become prudent from sharp lessons, redeemed his fame 
and ended the war. Strongly reinforced by Whish from Mooltan, 
and provided with an ample artillery, Gough attacked the Sikhs at 
Goojerat, east of Chillianwallah, and won a splendid victory in "the 
battle of the guns." The British cannon first crushed the enemy's 
fire, and then the Europeans and Sipahis advanced with the bayonet, 
and, showing heroic courage in a fight of seven hours, drove 40,000 
Sikhs from every position. The cavalry made a rout of the foe, and 
53 guns out of 60 were captured, with all the ammunition and 
baggage. The British loss, on this occasion, was but 100 slain 
and a few hundreds wounded. A close pursuit broke up the 
military power of the Sikhs, and those brave men, recognising stern 
facts, made a complete submission, piling arms at Rawal Pindi and 
surrendering all remaining cannon on March 12th. The whole 
Punjab then became an integral part of British-Indian territory. 
The young Raja, Dhulip Singh, was brought to England for education ; 
adopted the Christian faith ; received an ample pension from the 
Government, and took his place in society as a Norfolk " squire." 
The spoils of Lahore included the famous diamond styled " Koh-i- 
noor," or Mountain of Light, which was an attractive object in the 
Great Exhibition of 185 1, and has now, much reduced in size by 
cutting, been worn as a brooch for many years, on state-occasions, 
by Queen Victoria. The conquered territory w r as placed in charge 
of Sir Henry Lawrence, his brother John (the late Lord) Lawrence, 
and other able officials, and an excellent system of government was 
established. The best of the Sikh soldiers freely entered our service, 
with results honourable to both parties concerned. 

In 1852 a second Burmese war was caused by a long series of 
injurious and insulting acts towards British merchants in Burma. 
Our Resident at Ava had long been withdrawn, under Burmese bad 
treatment, and Lord Dalhousie, exactly the man for the time, 
resolved to administer a sharp lesson. In April, 1^52, a naval and 
military force, well equipped in every respect for the climate and 
the scene of action, entered the Irawaddi. Martaban was soon 
taken, and Rangoon was stormed, against vast odds, in the most 
"heroic style, with the rout of the Burmese " Immortals," picked 
warriors sworn to die at their posts. In the autumn Prome was 
seized, and the way up the river to Ava lay open. The Burmese 
king would make no terms, and in December Lord Dalhousie 
annexed the province of Pegu or Lower Burma, with the best results 



India 673 

for the people. In 40 years from that time the population of Ran- 
goon had grown fifteen-fold, and the annual value of the trade had 
risen from ^2,000,000 to ^14,000,000. A great territory, ruined by 
its sovereign's misrule, has thus been changed into a very prosperous 
and progressive dominion. One of Lord Dalhousie's last acts, in 
February, 1856, was the annexation of the province of Oudh, after 
many fruitless warnings, spread over many years, to the worthless 
sovereign who had made the country a scene of misery and disorder. 
In 1853 the last renewal of the East India Company's charter was 
attended by an arrangement which placed Bengal under a Lieutenant- 
Governor, for the relief of the Governor-General. The British 
dominions had so greatly increased towards the north-west that the 
chief military force was moved from Calcutta and Bengal towards 
the northern and central provinces, and Simla became, for a great 
part of the year, the centre of power as the residence of the Governor- 
General and his council. It was Dalhousie who devised the system 
of railways and telegraphs which now cover the country, with the 
virtual tripling of our military strength in rapidity of news and 
movement, and to the great advantage of trade and the people. 
New roads, canals, and public offices in every province ; cheap 
(halfpenny) postage ; and a complete graduated system of public 
instruction, were among the many benefits of civilisation conferred 
upon India by the great man who returned to England in the spring 
of 1856. 

Stupendous events quickly followed the assumption of power by 
Lord Canning, governor-general from 1856 to 1858. The great 
outbreak known as the Indian Mutiny, or Sepoy Mutiny, or Sepoy 
War, beginning at Meerut in June, 1857, has a literature of its own. 
The causes were complex — conspiracy of Mohammedan princes, 
Hindu credulity and fanaticism in connection with the issue to the 
troops of cartridges greased with ox-fat, the annexations under Lord 
Dalhousie, the small numbers of British troops in India. The 
events are well known to readers of British history. It was the 
loyalty of the Sikh troops in the Punjab, and the able management 
of affairs in that province by Sir John Lawrence and his colleagues, 
combined with the general fidelity of the Sipahis in the Bombay and 
Madras Presidencies, and the adherence to our cause of the Maharaja 
Scindia of Gwalior, of the Nizam of Hyderabad, of Holkar of Indore, 
and of the Nipalese princes Gholab Sing and Jung Bahadoor, that 
enabled us, at the outset of the struggle, to maintain a precarious 
hold on northern India until the arrival of large reinforcements 



674 A History of the World 

from home. The chief incidents were the two massacres of 
Cawnpore in June and July, 1857 ; the victorious march of General 
Havelock to Cawnpore and Lucknow ; the siege of the Lucknow 
Residency and its relief in November by Sir Colin Campbell (Lord 
Clyde) ; the siege of Delhi, held by the mutineers, and its capture 
by our troops in September ; the final capture of Lucknow by Lord 
Clyde in March, 1858 ; and the brilliant campaign of Sir Hugh Rose 
(Lord Strathnairn) in central India, in May and June of the same 
year. On December 20th, 1858, Lord Clyde was able to announce 
to the Governor-General that " the last remnant of the mutineers 
and insurgents had been hopelessly driven across the mountains 
into Nipal." A change of rule in India followed the suppression 
of the great revolt. The East India Company, by an Act passed in 
August, 1858, was abolished as a political power, and India came 
under the direct rule of the Crown, represented in Great Britain by 
a new Secretary of State, with a new council of 15 members, in 
place of the suppressed Board of Control. The " Governor-General " 
became a " Viceroy," with a Council, and was invested with supreme 
power in India, subject to the Secretary of State in England. At 
the same time, posts in the Civil Service of India were thrown open 
to candidates at competitive examinations. The naval and military 
forces of the Company passed into the Queen's service. The 
Company continued to exist as a body managing their " East India 
Stock" until June 1st, 1874, when, after the "redeeming" of the 
dividends on the capital stock under an Act of 1873, its long, 
chequered, and, on the whole, glorious history came to an end. 

On November 1st, 1858, the Queen was proclaimed as sovereign 
of India, in a document issued in various languages, breathing a 
noble spirit of benevolence and religious toleration. For 20 years 
the country was at peace, save for some border-warfare with turbulent 
tribes, under the rule of Lord Canning (viceroy from 1858 to 
1862); Lord Elgin, who died in November, 1863; Sir John (Lord) 
Lawrence (1863-1869); Lord Mayo, an able financier, unhappily 
murdered by a native fanatical convict at Port Blair, in the Andaman 
Isles, in February, 1872; and Lord Northbrook (1872-1876). In 
1866 there was a fearful famine in Orissa, due to lack of rain 
for the rice-crop, and like calamities occurred in 1868-69 in 
Bundelkhand and Upper Hindustan. In 1874 a famine in Lower 
Bengal and Behar was met by the officials with such energy and 
skill that, with 3,000,000 persons supported by the government, 
few deaths from starvation occurred. In 1875-76 the visit and tour 



India 675 

of the Prince of Wales elicited a loyal welcome from many of the 
chief native princes, who had come to understand that their own 
interests and those of their peoples were closely bound up with the 
maintenance of British supremacy. A change of policy came with 
the entry upon office as viceroy of Lord Lytton, son of the novelist 
and statesman, in 1876. Lord Beaconsfield, formerly known as 
Benjamin Disraeli, had his own ideas of foreign policy in India as 
regarded Russian advance towards our frontier, and in pursuance of 
his views a new attitude was adopted. Under an Act, on January 1st, 
1877, the Queen was proclaimed by Lord Lytton, at a magnificent 
Durbar (or Darbar, Persian for " court," " audience ") held at Delhi, 
as " Empress of India," in presence of the chief native princes, and 
with the grant of many new titles and distinctions dear to the 
Oriental mind. We may note, by the way, that this proceeding was 
followed by a fearful famine in southern and central India, causing 
a loss, in spite of the utmost efforts and the expenditure of 
^11,000,000 sterling in measures of relief, of at least 5,000,000 lives 
in 1877 and 1878. In this latter year a quarrel was picked with 
the ruler of Afghanistan, Shere Ali, on the ground that he had 
received a Russian and had declined to admit a British envoy. 
His country was invaded at three points by our troops ; battle after 
battle was won ; Kabul and Kandahar were occupied ; Shere Ali 
fled to Turkestan and died ; and in May, 1879, the Treaty of 
Gundamuk, concluded with his son and successor, Yakub Khan, 
bound the Afghan ruler to admit a British Resident at Kabul, 
and to follow the viceroy's advice in foreign affairs. Sir Louis 
Napoleon Cavagnari, son of an Italian who had been a devoted 
friend of the French emperor, Napoleon III., became our minister 
at Kabul. Within a month of the arrival of himself and suite 
they were all massacred in a rising of the mutinous and bigoted 
Afghan troops in the capital. This tragical event was followed 
by another invasion ; several victories ; the occupation of Kabul ; 
the punishment of the murderers of the British mission ; the 
abdication of Yakub Khan ; a general rebellion of the Afghans ; 
brilliant and victorious operations under Sir Frederick Roberts 
around Kabul ; the defeat of the enemy at Ghazni by General 
Stewart in March, 1880 ; the destruction of a large part of a British 
and Sipahi force on July 27th at Maiwand, 50 miles from Kandahar, 
by Ayub Khan, a son of Shere Ali ; the march of Roberts from 
Kabul to Kandahar, and his utter defeat of Ayub outside that 
city. These matters ended in the restoration of peace, and the 



676 A History of the World 

establishment of Abdur Rahman Khan, a grandson of the former 
Amir, Dost Mahommed, of Lord Auckland's time, as ruler of 
Afghanistan. He has remained loyal to British interests, so far 
as our government is aware of the facts, in receipt of a yearly 
subsidy of ^£i 20,000. 

In 1880 the marquis of Ripon became viceroy, and did good 
work in internal reforms, especially in the development of agriculture 
and of popular education. On January 1st, 1886, under the vice- 
royalty of the accomplished Lord Dufferin, and on the special 
instructions of Lord Randolph Churchill, then Secretary of State 
for India, the tipsy tyrant, Thebau, who was then king of Burma, 
was deposed for ill-treatment of British traders, and the whole of 
Upper Burma was annexed. After some years of trouble with 
dacoits, the new territory was reduced to a peaceful condition, and 
has since been prospering under British rule. In 1887 a new 
frontier was marked out between Russian territory and Afghanistan, 
with a view to the preservation of peace, rudely disturbed in 
March, 1885, by a perfidious, cowardly, murderous, and, in every 
point, disgraceful outrage perpetrated by Russians under General 
Alikhanoff on Afghan forces stationed at Penjdeh, on their own 
territory. Abdur Rahman's men, with rude muskets, had no chance 
against breechloaders, and some thousands perished under a wanton 
attack. The act was a deliberate insult to Great Britain, and 
should have been followed by an immediate declaration of war. 
Mr. Gladstone, however, was Prime Minister, and Lord Granville 
was Foreign Secretary, and the matter was settled by "explanations." 
It should be observed that this monstrous deed was done, by choice, 
at the very time when the Amir of Afghanistan was the guest of 
the Kritish viceroy, Lord Dufferin, at Rawal Pindi, in the Punjab. 
It is pleasant to note that, in the critical position of affairs after 
the conflict at Penjdeh, native princes in India came forward with 
the greatest zeal, offering aid to the viceroy in men and money, 
some desiring to place the whole of their forces under British 
command, others asking permission to pay the whole expenses of 
their troops if they fought with the Indian army against Russia. 
Other rulers, not having trained troops at their disposal, offered 
stores of food and means of transport. It is needless to dwell 
upon the significance and importance of this demonstration. In 
1887 Queen Victoria's first Jubilee was celebrated with the utmost 
loyalty throughout her Indian dominions, and many native princes 
attended the service in Westminster Abbey. Under Lord Lans- 





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Persia, Mediaeval and Modern 677 

downe (1888- 1893) much advance was made in the development 
of local government through municipal councils and district-boards 
on a system arranged by Lord Ripon. The natives of India, as 
represented by their ablest and most cultured fellow-countrymen, 
are thus made sharers, as to local matters, as they have long been 
for higher affairs, in the government of a vast population. In 1894 
Lord Lansdowne was succeeded as viceroy by the earl of Elgin, 
son of the former ruler. Among the latest events have been the 
warfare in Chitral and on the north-western frontier, connected with 
the " forward policy " dear to some military members of the viceregal 
council, the merits or demerits of which we cannot here discuss. 
In 1896-97 another serious famine, due to drought, occurred in 
north-west and central India. No great loss of life occurred, owing 
to energetic measures of relief, aided by a " Lord Mayor's Fund " 
in London which furnished about ,£550,000. At the same time 
there were very fatal outbreaks of Oriental "plague" in and near 
Bombay, and in June, 1897, an earthquake of rare severity for India 
did much damage in Calcutta, and caused serious loss of life and 
property in Assam. 

Chapter III. — Persia, Arabia, Mediaeval and Modern; Sia.m. 

Of Persia, in mediaeval times, something has been seen incidentally 
in connection with the Roman (Western) and Byzantine (Greek or 
Eastern) Empires. On the downfall of the Parthian realm in 
a.d. 226, a new Persian empire, embracing much of central Asia, 
was founded, as we have seen, by a Persian named Ardashir Babigan, 
or Artaxerxes I., of the dynasty called the Sassanidae from his grand- 
father Sassan, which held rule for over four centuries. A high point 
of power and prosperity was attained. Among the chief sovereigns 
were Sapor I. (240-271), who waged war successfully with the 
Roman empire, capturing Antioch and other towns, and making a 
prisoner for life of the emperor Valerian ; Sapor II., styled " the 
Great," who reigned, it is said, from 310 to 381, extending his power 
over Tartar tribes to the east, warring with the Roman emperor 
Julian, recovering several provinces from Rome, and conquering 
Armenia; and Chosroes I. (531-579), the greatest of the Sassanid 
kings, who fought victoriously with the Byzantine emperors, the 
Turks, and the Arabs, and extended his dominions from the Indus 
to the Mediterranean, and from the Jaxartes (Sihun or Syr-Daria) to 
Arabia and the borders of Egypt. In a treaty concluded between 



6 7 : 



A History of the World 



Persia and the Eastern (Greek) Empire in 563 we note with interest 
that Christianity was to be tolerated in Persia, and that disputes 
between the contracting powers were to be referred to arbitration. 
Under this able ruler the administration of affairs was much improved. 
Frequent " progresses " enabled him to exercise supervision as to 
provincial rule ; a fixed land-tax was established, and the collectors 
were placed under the control of the priests ; irrigation was ex- 
tended, learning was encouraged, and foreigners were protected. 
The Byzantine emperor Heraclius, as we have seen, after being 
reduced to great straits by Persian conquest under Chosroes II. 
(589-628), crushed his foe in a battle at Nineveh, in 627, and the 
Persian king was then murdered at Ctesiphon by mutinous troops. 
This event was quickly followed by the downfall of the Sassanid 
dynasty under Arab conquest. In 633 a Persian defeat placed 
the whole territory west of the Euphrates in possession of the 
Arabs ; in 636, at the four days' battle- of Kadesia, near the Tigris, 
the royal Persian standard was lost to the Caliph (Khalif) Omar; 
in the following year Mesopotamia was invaded, Ctesiphon taken, 
,and the Persians suffered another defeat. The end drew near in 
639 when the Arabs entered Susiana and Persia proper. It was 
then that the brave and virtuous Omar displayed his noble character 
in good faith to a conquered foe who outwitted him. A Persian 
general, Harmosan, brought a captive before the Caliph, begged for 
a cup of water before he died. Hesitating to taste it, in fear of 
poison or a sudden stab, he was assured by his conqueror that 
he should have no harm until he had quaffed the contents of the 
cup. He instantly dashed the goblet down on the sand, and 
claimed his life. In a modern poet's words — 

" For a moment stood the caliph, as by doubtful passions stirred, 
Then exclaimed, ' For ever sacred must remain a monarch's word ! 
Bring another cup and straightway to the noble P.ersian give : 
Drink, I said before, and perish — now I bid thee drink, and live.' " 

By a supreme effort, the last of the Sassanidae, Yezdigerd III., 
gathered an army of 150,000 men, but at the battle of Nahavend 
(the " victory of victories "), in 641, he was utterly beaten, and Persia 
became for more than 150 years a province of the caliphate. 

Under the Abbaside dynasty, which came into power in 750, 
Bagdad became the capital, and Khorassan was the favourite 
province, Persia being regarded as the centre of the caliphate. 
After the Arab conquest, the old Persian religion was abandoned for 



Persia, Mediaeval and Modern 679 

the faith of Islam, the Guebres or Parsis alone adhering to the creed 
of Zoroaster. Early in the 9th century numerous small states 
began to arise in the Persian territories, and the history has little of 
interest or importance. We have seen, in the history of India, a 
Sultan Mahmud as conquering in the Punjab, and Afghan sultans of 
Ghor. These sovereigns belonged to some of the many dynasties 
which arose. The Seljuk Turks held sway from the Hellespont to 
Afghanistan in part of the nth and 12th centuries, and succumbed, 
in their turn, to the Mongols under Genghis Khan. The Perso- 
Mongol dynasty ruled from 1253 to 1335, and at the end of the 
14th century all the old and mediaeval Persian empire became 
subject to Timour or Tamerlane. When the Mongol power in Persia 
ended, in the 15 th century, the Turkomans had the mastery, and 
they were succeeded, in 1501, by the Sufi dynasty in western 
Persia, founded by a prince Ismail, the descendant of a long line of 
saints and devotees, and head of a number of Turkish tribes. 
These rulers were in power until 1736. Ismail is revered by the 
modern Persians as the restorer of the empire and as the founder of 
the Shiah form of Mohammedanism which is their national religion. 
Shah Abbas I., or Abbas the Great (1 587-1628), was the chief 
Eastern ruler of his day. His bravery and vigour restored internal 
peace; repelled Turkoman invaders; defeated the Turks in 1605 
so completely as to recover the lost territory of Kurdistan, Diarbekir 
and Mosul ; and took Kandahar from the Mughal emperor of India. 
His army was disciplined in the European style by two British 
officers, and supplied with good artillery. Ruling as an absolute 
monarch, and master of the cities of Bagdad and Bassora, part of 
his conquests from the Turks, Shah Abbas made Ispahan his capital, 
and distinguished himself by the justice and strictness of his 
government, by great and beneficial public works, and by religious 
tolerance. Under his successors the monarchy declined, having 
another brief period of power under the usurper Nadir Shah, whom 
we have seen as the captor and ravager of Delhi. His death in 
1747 was followed by terrible anarchy and civil war, and, in a 
division of the territories, Afghanistan and Beluchist in were finally 
lost. An excellent ruler named Kerim Khan, just, wise, and warlike, 
was master of the whole of western Iran or modern Persia from 
1755 until his death in 1779, and then, after another period of 
strife, Aga Mohammed, a Turkoman chief of great qualities, became 
the first sovereign of the present dynasty. The losses to Russia 
early in the 19th century have been already noted. In 1848 



68o A History of the World 

Nasr-ed-din succeeded his father Mohammed Shah, and reigned for 
nearly half a century. Many reforms were promised, but not effected, 
and misrule caused frequent insurrections. Persia had been recently 
brought into close connection with Great Britain by some warfare 
which, in 1838, prevented Mohammed Shah from annexing Herat, 
and by a commercial treaty concluded in 1841. The hankering of 
Persian governments for Herat broke out again in 1852, when the 
town and territory were annexed by Persia, but British interference 
compelled their cession, and the Shah, in 1853, bound himself not 
to interfere further in that direction. Under Russian influence and 
intrigue, this promise was soon violated, and an Anglo-Persian war 
was the result. In October, 1856, Persian forces occupied Herat, 
and a British expedition was promptly dispatched from India. The 
fortified town of Bushire, in the Persian Gulf, was seized, and the 
traffic in slaves was abolished. Some battles on land, with the 
destruction of Persian infantry, in squares, by our cavalry, were 
gained by our men, and in March, 1857, the Shah was compelled to 
acknowledge the independence of Herat, and to abstain from all 
interference in Afghan affairs. No other events of note have 
occurred. The Shah visited Europe in 1873 and 1889, staying in 
the British Isles for short periods during his lengthy tours, and 
aroused much interest in his personality as a combination of civilisa- 
tion and semi-barbarism — a love of sport and adventure, of art and 
literature, the tastes and accomplishments of a hunter, a marksman, 
and a mountaineer, a delight in splendour and sumptuous living. 
In his own capital, Teheran, where he dwelt in a palace of 
marvellous beauty, the Shah led an active life, rising early for state- 
business, dispensing with some of the stricter court-etiquette, and 
giving many audiences to foreign ministers. On his return to 
Persia from the first visit to Europe, the Teheran Gazette was 
allowed to publish the monarch's remarkable diary describing the 
marvels which he had seen. On May 1st, 1896, Nasr-ed-din met 
his death at Teheran by assassination, with a pistol-shot in the 
heart, at the hands of a member of a secret society, and was 
succeeded by Muzaffer-ed-din, his second son. 

The Arabs have been' largely seen in their foreign conquests and 
civilisation. In the great Arabian peninsula itself, for a thousand 
years after Mohammed, there were few events of interest. The 
country included several independent principalities. Early in the 
1 6th century the Turks subdued Hejaz and Yemen, retaining the 
former to the present day, but losing the latter for the period 



Si am 68 1 

between 1630 and 187 1. In the east, Oman became independent 
of the caliphs in the 8th century, and was a well-organised kingdom. 
Between 1507 and 1659 its capital, Muscat, was in the hands of the 
Portuguese. Then the Dutch held many important places on the 
coast, and the Persians, under Nadir Shah, were in possession of 
Oman for a short time, being driven out in 1759 by a native prince, 
who became Sultan, and extended his power over some of the 
opposite Persian coast and the adjacent islands. About the middle 
of the 1 8th century we have the appearance of the Wahabis, a sect 
of Mohammedans founded by Abd-el-Wahab, an excellent scholar, 
eager to restore the primitive faith and practice of Islam. These 
Puritans of Mohammedanism became powerful under their leader's 
first important convert and son-in-law, Prince Saood, whose sword 
gave them rule from the frontiers of Mecca to the Persian Gulf. 
Under his successors, Mecca and Medina were added to the Wahabi 
dominion, and numerous tribes of Bedouins were conquered and 
converted. The political power of the "Wahabis disappeared, early 
in the 19th century, under the conquests made in Arabia by 
Mehemet Ali of Egypt. In 1863 the distinguished traveller William 
Gifford Palgrave found that the Wahabi power had revived and 
reached a higher point than ever. Oman has become independent 
under the Sultan of Muscat, and Great Britain has exercised 
considerable influence in southern Arabia since her occupation of 
Aden in 1839. 

Siam is an Asiatic country which has, in recent years, acquired 
interest and importance. We have no authentic history until 1357, 
when Ayuthia, on the Menam, was founded as capital. Cambodia 
was made tributary in 1532. In the latter half of the 17th century 
there was a flourishing period under the influence of the monarch's 
chief minister, a Cephalonian Greek. In 1768 the capital was 
plundered and burnt in a Burmese invasion, the enemy being at last 
driven out by a commander of Chino-Siamese race, who made 
Bangkok the capital and became king. The present dynasty was 
founded in 1782. The former system of having "first" and 
" second " kings having been abolished, the present sole sovereign is 
Chulalongkorn I., born in 1 853, who succeeded in 1868. This 
excellent, amiable, and intelligent monarch, a master of the English 
tongue, has done much for the progress of his country, in the 
abolition of slavery and the introduction of British education and 
British government-officials, and of various points of Western 
civilisation. In the summer of 1897 he visited Europe, arriving in 



682 A History of the World 

England in August, and paying visits to Edinburgh and other great 
towns. He displayed a rare acquaintance with and interest in 
British history, and won all hearts by his tender regard for the 
sick children in the Edinburgh hospitals. Many Siamese boys and 
girls have been under instruction in England, making good progress 
in various branches of education. The king of Siam has further 
shown his appreciation of this country's position in the world by 
making the crown prince a pupil at Harrow School. 

Chapter IV. — Asiatic Possessions of Great Britain and 
other European Nations, apart from India, Burma, 
and Central Asia. 

The beautiful and fertile island of Ceylon, called Lunka in Sanskrit, 
Singhala by the natives, and Taprobane by the Greeks, has its 
British name from Marco Polo's Sailan, a corruption of Sihalam l 
the Pali form of Sinhala, meaning " the place of lions." Native 
records, covering a period from 543 B.C. to the middle of the 18th 
century, describe the foundation of an Aryan realm in the 6th 
century b.c. and the introduction of Buddhism by Gautama. An 
early civilisation produced cities whose stupendous remains are 
found buried in tropical foliage, with bell-shaped shrines, temples, 
and great "tanks" or reservoirs for irrigation. Malabars or Tamils 
from the mainland of India began a series of invasions, anarchy, 
and civil strife, ended in the nth century a.d. by the founding of 
a strong monarchy under native rulers, the most eminent of whom 
was Prakrama Bahu, in the 12th century, a promoter of religion 
and of tillage, as shown by his construction of many temples and 
of tanks called "the seas of Prakrama." After his age the whole 
island was conquered by the Malabars. The Portuguese first made 
European settlements in 15 17, erecting a "factory" or trading-post 
near Colombo, by permission of a native king, and then constructing 
armed works and holding their ground against native attacks. In 
course of time, the Portuguese held the coasts and part of the 
north, arousing much hostility, by tyrannous conduct, among the 
Singhalese. In 1602 the Dutch made their first appearance as 
traders, and formed an alliance with the native king of Kandy. In 
1638 the Dutch attacked the Portuguese posts, and finally drove 
their rivals out by the seizure of their capital, Colombo. The 
natives fared no better at the hands of the new-comers, and warfare 
ended in the Singhalese being driven for refuge to the interior hills 



Ceylon — Malay Territories 683 

and forests. The Dutch, during a century and a half of occupation, 
improved communication by making canals and roads, and developed 
a great trade in cinnamon, pearls, and cocoa-nut oil. At the close 
of the 1 8th century British forces, during the great European war, 
appeared on the scene, and an expedition from Madras seized 
Colombo, Trincomali, and other towns on the coast. The Peace 
of Amiens, in 1802, confirmed our conquest, which soon became 
a separate colony, after annexation for some years to the Madras 
Presidency. There was much trouble at first with the natives of 
the interior, but in 18 15 the king of Kandy, a detestable specimen 
of the Oriental despot, was deposed, and the whole island came 
under British rule, with religious freedom for the Buddhist popula- 
tion. In 181 7 a native rebellion was suppressed in a two-years' 
struggle, and the restoration of order was followed by the construc- 
tion of a system of military roads, due to the initiative of an excellent 
governor, Sir Edward Barnes, and especially to the skill and energy 
of Major Skinner, " Tom Skinner," as he was popularly called, 
who was at work from 1819 until 1867. In this last year there 
were nearly 3,000 miles of roads in the island, one-fifth being first- 
class metalled highways, and another fifth good gravelled work. 
The resources of the island have of late years been greatly developed 
through the construction and restoration of irrigation-works, and 
the introduction of a most profitable cultivation of excellent tea, 
after the failure of the coffee-plants under the attacks of disease. 
Turning next to the Malay territories, we find Penang, or 
Prince of Wales Island, and the strip of coast called Wellesley 
Peninsula, ceded to the British Crown, by purchase from a native 
raja, towards the end of the r8th century, the acquisition being soon 
followed by the suppression of the Malay pirates who, in their swift - 
sailing prahus ox proas, had long been a pest to traders in those seas. 
Malacca, the largest of the " Straits Settlements," became a Portuguese 
colony in 15 n, under the famous Albuquerque, and was conquered 
by the Dutch in 1641. After being held by British forces from 1795 
till 1818, and then restored to the Dutch, it became ours by exchange 
for Bencoolen, in Sumatra, in 1824. Singapore, in British hands, 
has become the seat of an enormous trade. Its foundation was due 
to the able and enterprising Sir Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-governor 
of Java during our possession of that island from 181 1 till 1816. 
He was then chosen to form a new settlement in the island of 
Singapore, with the purpose of establishing a commercial rivalry with 
the Dutch, and of checking the Malay pirates who harassed the 



684 A History of the World 

China trade of the East India Company. The town was founded 
in the year of Queen Victoria's birth, and the island, five years later, 
was purchased from the Sultan of Johore, the ruler of the opposite 
mainland. In other parts of south-eastern Asia, the acquisition of 
Hong-Kong has been already recorded. The island of Labuan, on 
the north-west coast of Borneo, mainly in Dutch possession, was 
ceded to Great Britain in 1846 by the Sultan of Brunei, who desired 
our aid in suppressing Malay piracy. British North Borneo, a 
territory as large as Scotland, in the extreme north of that vast 
island, was founded as a colony in 1881 by a chartered company, 
and seven years later became a British " Protectorate." The Pro- 
tectorates of Brunei and Sarawak, adjacent to North Borneo, were 
established in 1888, the latter state having been founded by the 
famous Sir James (or " Raja ") Brooke, an adventurous man born 
at Benares, a veteran of the first Burmese war, and then a pioneer 
of British civilisation in the Eastern Archipelago. His aid against 
rebels obtained for him the title and position of " Raja and Governor 
of Sarawak," in 1841, from a Bornese Sultan, and he did good work 
against piracy, winning a knighthood of the Bath from the Queen 
seven years later. The Malay States of Johore, Perak, Selangor, 
Negri Sembilan, Pahang, and others, were "federated " in July, 1896, 
under British control wielded by a " Resident-General " subject to 
the High Commissioner at Singapore, and the peace, order, and 
prosperity which had for 20 years been in progress under British 
influence have been thereby confirmed and secured. 

The Dutch have for nearly three centuries been the holders 
of a great colonial dominion in the East Indies — in Java and Sumatra, 
Banca and Billiton, Borneo and Celebes, the Moluccas, the Timor 
Archipelago, and other islands. Little that can be called history 
attaches to their tenure of these vast possessions, having an area of 
about 740,000 square miles, and a population of 35,000,000 or seven 
times that of the mother country. A tragical event of distant date 
occurred in Amboyna, the chief of the Moluccas or Spice Islands, 
taken by the Dutch from the Portuguese in 1605. The British 
settlement was destroyed by the Hollanders in the " Amboyna 
massacre" of 1623. It is significant that the Stuart kings, James I. 
and Charles I., took little heed of this outrage, and that no com- 
pensation was exacted until 1654, when the British Isles were under 
the rule of that great Englishman, " Protector " Cromwell. The 
island of Amboyna, held by British forces from 1796 to 1802, 
became finally a Dutch possession in 1814. Java has been a most 



Sumatra — Philippine Islands — Tongking 685 

profitable source of income to Holland, under a system of rule 
which, with little regard to the interests of the natives, compels 
them to cultivate the soil for staple articles of trade, and deliver 
the produce at a fixed price to the government-magazines. An 
" Agrarian Law " of 1870 has now done something to promote the 
establishment of private plantations. Sumatra, a great region under 
Hindu influence before the 7th century, became Mohammedan in the 
13th century. First introduced to European notice in 1508, by the 
Portuguese, who soon founded coast-settlements for trade, the island 
came into Dutch possession at the end of the 16th century. In 
1620 the Dutch East India Company began to settle the coast, 
but even that part of the island was not completely occupied by 
Europeans until recent years, and much of the interior is still un- 
explored. In north Sumatra there was an independent Malay state 
called Atcheen, which was a powerful sultanate during the earlier 
part of the 17th century. Its independence, after a decline of 
power, was reserved in a treaty between Great Britain and Holland 
in 1824, but in 1873 a long and severe struggle began between the 
Dutch and the bold, active, treacherous, bloodthirsty Atcheenese, 
with great cost to the military and financial resources of the European 
state. In 1874 the capital, Atcheen, was stormed by the Dutch 
troops, but the country was not nominally subdued until 1879, and 
has even now been hardly quite pacified. 

Spain, conspicuous among European nations for ignominious 
failure as a colonising power and a ruler of dependencies, the Spain 
whose atrocious misrule of Cuba brought her in April, 1898, into 
war with the United States, has for over three centuries held the 
Philippine Islands. Discovered in 152 1 by Magellan, who was 
killed in that year on one of the islets, the Philippines, named from 
the bigot and miscreant who then ruled Spain, were formally annexed 
in 1569. Manilla, the capital, was founded in 157 1, and, becoming 
famous, and dear to smokers, in course of time, for admirable cigars 
and cheroots, has been further distinguished by liability to destruc- 
tive earthquakes. In 1863 the great town, with a population of 
250,000, was nearly destroyed. The seismographs of the government- 
observatory are in almost incessant vibration, and in 1872 and 18S0 
there were disastrous convulsions in various parts of the great archi- 
pelago. In 1896 and 1897 the Spanish government had to deal, as 
in Cuba, with persistent rebellion. 

Tongking (Tonquin or Tonkin), in the north-east of the Indo 
Chinese peninsula, came before the world prominently in 1883, 
45 



686 A History of the World 

when French colonial ambition led to warfare. In the 15th century 
Annam, of which Tongking forms part, became independent of 
China, and early in the 16th century the Portuguese entered the 
country, being followed by the Dutch, who founded a trading-town 
at Hanoi. In 1789, with French aid, the emperor of Annam 
brought Tongking and Cochin-China under his rule. In 1861 the 
province of Saigon was annexed by France, and in 1862 a treaty 
established "French Cochin-China." In 1882 Hanoi, the capital 
of Tongking, was captured by the French, and held with great 
difficulty, until the arrival of strong reinforcements in the following 
year, against Chinese attempts to retake it. Admiral Courbet was 
in charge of a newly formed naval brigade, and in December, 1883, 
after desperate fighting, the town of Son-tai, the military " key " 
of Tongking, was gallantly stormed by the French troops, giving the 
Europeans firm possession of the country. In 1884 Annam, which 
may be regarded as the southern part of Cochin-China, acknowledged 
the suzerainty of France, and her right to regulate her relations with 
foreign powers. In 1885 China recognised this state of affairs, and 
the whole peninsula is now practically a dependency of France. 



Section V. AFRICA, MEDI/EVAL AND 
MODERN. 



Chapter I. — Northern Africa. 

The spread of Islam in this region has been already recorded. Up 
to the 15th century much was done to make Mauritania, Soudan, 
and the Sahara known to the world, through the work of Arab 
(Moorish) explorers and writers. As regards Egypt, we have seen 
that the country became part of the Eastern (Greek or Byzantine) 
Empire, and then, by Mohammedan conquest, a province of the 
Caliph Omar. Arab governors, in the 9th and 10th centuries, became 
practically independent, and then the country was conquered by a 
line of Fatimi caliphs, heretical (Shi'ah) rulers descended from Ali 
and Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. They founded modern Cairo 
in 969, with its famous University and some of the chief mosques. 
In 1 169 the dynasty was deposed by the Kurd commander Salah- 
ed-din, the renowned Saladin of the Crusades, who fortified Cairo 
and built the citadel. We have seen the fortunes of the country 
in the Crusade period. The bodyguard of the last prince of Saladin's 
line was composed of the celebrated Mamelukes (Mamluks), mean- 
ing " white slaves," introduced by him from the Caucasus and Asia 
Minor. It was they who played the chief part in repelling the 
French invasion, with the capture of St. Louis (Louis IX.) in 1249, 
and in the following year, on their sultan's death, they usurped 
supreme power, and founded the line of " slave-kings," Turkish 
and Circassian Mamelukes, which ruled Egypt for over 250 years. 
The succession was not hereditary, but by choice of these Moslem 
" praetorians," on the ground of personal courage, strength, and 
achievement. Much of the land was held by the troops on a kind 
of feudal tenure, and there were frequent conflicts between the 

687 



688 A History of the World 

supporters of rival lords or commanders. These Mameluke rulers 
of Egypt were very remarkable for their display of military violence 
and superficial semi-barbarism combined with a high degree of 
civilisation in government, luxury, and patronage of literature and 
art. Fighting fiercely in Palestine against Mongol hosts, in order 
to preserve the " holy places," they had diplomatic intercourse with 
Venice and France, and with Persia in the East. Tyrannical in 
rule, and cruel to all opponents, they were more enlightened in their 
methods of administration, and in promoting high culture, than any 
holders of power in Egypt since the Pharaohs, or, at least, since 
the time of Alexander the Great. Refined in their domestic life, 
they adorned Cairo with its fairest mosques ; maintained a court 
of surpassing splendour ; decorated their palaces with exquisite 
works in brass, engraved and inlaid, in ivory and wood-carvings, 
tile and stone-work, mosaic pavements, and enamelled glass. The 
judicial, legal, educational, and police arrangements ; the naval and 
military systems ; the postal service, engineering, and irrigation-works, 
were far in advance of the age, and they rank, as Turks of really 
civilised tastes and performances, among the surprising things^ of 
history. 

It was a grievous matter for Egypt when the Ottoman Turks, 
under Selim I., became masters of the country in 15 17. Corrupt 
pashas were then in nominal power, with Mameluke beys holding 
real rule in the provinces, until 1798, when the Mamelukes, in their 
last gleam of glory, fought bravely against Napoleon's soldiers. The 
British occupation of the country, and its restoration to the Porte, 
have been recorded. A revival came with the pashaship of Mo- 
hammed (Mehemet) AH in 1805. The country was disturbed by 
the contests of rival Mameluke commanders, and the energetic new 
ruler resolved to be rid of the whole body. A portion were 
massacred in 1805. A British expedition in 1807, under General 
Fraser, aimed at restoring the supremacy of the rest, then at open 
war in Upper Egypt against the Pasha, at a time when Great Britain 
was engaged in hostilities with Turkey. When he heard of the 
landing of the British, the pasha at once patched up a peace with 
the Mamelukes and marched northwards. Alexandria had sur- 
rendered to a force of 5,000 men embarked at Messina, and then 
Rosetta was entered by Fraser with 1,500 men, who were repulsed 
with great loss by firing from the house-tops and windows. 
Another force, under General Stewart, of 2,500 men, was compelled 
to retreat with severe loss, and the matter ended with the evacua- 



Northern Africa 689 

tion of the country by Fraser, and the surrender of the British 
prisoners. It had been arranged with the Mamelukes that the 
whole corps should reside at Cairo, and most of them fixed their 
residence at Gizeh, near the city. They then intrigued with the 
Pasha of Acre for an attack on Mohammed Ali and the remnant 
of his troops, when the main Egyptian army, at the command of 
his suzerain, the Turkish Sultan, should have started on an expedi- 
tion against the Wahabis in Arabia, who had, as we have seen, 
seized Mecca and Medina. The Pasha was, however, aware of the 
plot through the bought treachery of a confidant of the Mameluke 
commander, and he craftily laid his plans for punishment. In 
March, 181 1, at a festivity to which the Mamelukes had been 
invited in Cairo citadel, they were suddenly assailed in a narrow 
way, between the outer and inner walls of the fortress, by infantry- 
fire at close quarters from the walls, and the survivors who 
surrendered were at once beheaded. Nearly the whole body 
perished there and, in the course of the month, at various towns 
and villages in Upper Egypt. Twenty-four heads of beys and other 
chief men were sent to Constantinople. 

Under Mohammed Ali's rule a regular Egyptian army was 
formed, irrigation was improved, and some elements of European 
civilisation arose. His son Ibrahim conquered part of Arabia in 
1816, and in 1820 Nubia and part of the Soudan were annexed. 
We have noted the part taken by Egyptian troops in Greece during 
the war of liberation, and the destruction of the fleet at Navarino 
in 1827. Ibrahim evacuated the Morea in the following year, and 
then, in pursuance of his father's ambitious schemes against the 
Sultan, he undertook the conquest of Syria, routing the Ottoman 
forces, and advancing through Asia Minor to the Bosphorus. 
Peace came through the intervention of the Powers, and Mohammed 
Ali held Syria for some years as a fief from the Sultan. In 1839 
the Turkish troops employed to reconquer Syria were defeated by 
Ibrahim at Nisib, on the Euphrates, in a battle remarkable for the 
presence, on the beaten side, of Captain von Moltke, afterwards 
the illustrious strategist of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-German 
wars. He was on the staff of the Turkish general as military 
adviser, but at the critical moment his words were unheeded. A 
rout ensued in which von Moltke and two Prussian officers had to 
ride for their lives. The Turkish fleet, through the treachery of its 
commander, came into Mohammed Ali's possession, and the Pasha 
of Egypt seemed likely to dethrone and succeed the Sultan ; but 



690 A History of the World 

the Powers intervened, and British and Austrian naval operations 
on the Syrian coast, with the seizure of St. Jean d'Acre by the 
British, compelled the withdrawal of Mohammed Ali from his 
conquest, with the retention of only the pashaship of Egypt as 
hereditary, under the Porte as suzerain. His abdication from 
mental imbecility in 1848, and the almost immediate death of his 
son and successor Ibrahim, brought to the throne his grandson 
Abbas Pasha, succeeded in 1854 by Mohammed Ali's youngest 
son Sa'id Pasha. M". de Lesseps was then enabled to undertake 
the construction of the Suez Canal, completed in 1869 under 
Ismail Pasha, son of Ibrahim. Ismail, succeeding his uncle Sa'id 
in 1863, had purchased from the Sultan the hereditary title of 
"Khedive" (sovereign) in 1866, with direct succession of power 
from father to son, instead of by the Turkish law of descent to the 
eldest male of the family. 

In this secure position, Ismail plunged into vast expenses for the 
advancement of the country. The completion of the Suez Canal ; 
the increase of telegraphs and railways ; the construction of roads, 
lighthouses, and bridges ; a new postal service ; the improvement of 
harbours at Port Said, Suez, and Alexandria ; the spread of education, 
and other schemes of internal reform, piled up a great debt in loans, 
and caused, in 1875, tne sa ' e to Great Britain of about half the 
shares in the Suez Canal. The dominions were extended southwards 
by the annexation ot Dar-Ffir in 1874, and by further conquests, and 
attempts were made to suppress the slave-trade through the action of 
Sir Samuel Baker and Charles Gordon, successive governors in the 
Soudan. It was the financial difficulty which started the " Egyptian 
question," still before the political and diplomatic world. The 
Khedive, in his distress, applied to the British government to aid him 
with loans, but no good security was forthcoming, and, after inquiries 
into the condition of affairs by various British and French financiers, 
a "dual control" exercised by Great Britain and France brought 
Egyptian revenue and expenditure under proper management. 
Further misrule caused Ismail's deposition by the Sultan, at the 
instance of the two Western Powers, in 1879, a pd his eldest son, 
Prince Tewfik, became Khedive. European intervention caused 
the rise of a hostile native party, and in 1881 the military revolt 
under Arabi Pasha brought events know n from British history. In 
June, 1882, a rising against foreigners, and the slaughter of English 
and French residents at Alexandria, was followed by the bombard- 
ment of the forts by a British fleet, the firing of the city by the mob, 



Northern Africa 691 

the murder of about 2,000 Europeans, the restoration of order by 
British sailors and marines, and the occupation of Egypt by British 
forces. Sir Garnet (Lord) Wolseley won the battles of Kassassin 
and Tel-el- Kebir, and the surrender of Cairo and capture of Arabi 
sent him an exile to Ceylon. The rule of the country has since, to 
the great advantage of the people, been put on a new basis by Lord 
Cromer (Sir Evelyn Baring) and able coadjutors. 

Tunis, having many bays and ports suitable for Mediterranean 
commerce and naval enterprise, was invaded and occupied by French 
and Navarrese forces in 1270, but little use was made of the 
acquisition, and it was soon again in Moorish possession, and 
became a centre of corsair-raids, under the famous Barbarossa, early 
in the 16th century. The expedition of Charles V. placed it in 
Christian hands for a time, but in 1575 the country was wholly 
subdued by the Ottoman Turks, and the beys, at first high officials 
under the pashas, and then hereditary sovereigns, enriched them- 
selves by piracy on Christian vessels. Their insolence, and the 
apathy of the great European governments, in the 18th century, 
appear almost incredible in these days. A French consul, in 1740 ; 
a British envoy, in 1762 ; and the government of Austria, in 1784 ; 
made ignominious submission, in servile dread, to the demands of 
these marauders, and Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and the 
United States, at the very end of that century, were tributaries of 
the beys, paying sums of money for treaties to secure their mercantile 
vessels from attack. Lord Exmouth, afterwards the victor of Algiers, 
was the first to deal firmly with the government of Tunis, forcing 
the bey, by threats of hostilities, to sign a treaty, in 1816, for the 
abolition of Christian slavery throughout his dominions. After the 
great bombardment of Algiers, piracy began to cease in the Medi- 
terranean, and Tunis made great progress under some enlightened 
and reforming sovereigns. In 1881 the country was invaded, on a 
frivolous pretence, by French troops, and a " protectorate " was 
established, followed by the virtual annexation of the territory, now 
administered by the French Foreign Office. 

Tripoli, conquered by the Arabs in the 8th century, annexed for 
a time by Spain in 1510, and held by the Knights of St. John, on 
their expulsion by the Turks from Rhodes, from 1523 till 155 1, was 
then finally conquered by Turkey. The ports were, like many others 
in the Barbary States, the centres of the piracy which preyed upon 
maritime Christendom down to the earlier years of the 19th century. 
In 17 15 a pasha, assuming the title of "bey" ("lord"), made the 



692 A History of the World 

country semi-independent of Turkey, and his successors, for more 
than a century, were mere impudent pirates and blackmailers of 
commerce. In 1801 the Tripolitan ruler, after shameless demands 
for money and cannon and small-arms from the United States 
government, as the price of immunity for American ships, chopped 
down the flagstaff of the American Consulate at Tripoli. The United 
States took up the scoundrel's challenge, and sent men-of-war to the 
Mediterranean. After some delays, from various causes, and the 
loss of the frigate Philadelphia, 36 guns, by running ashore, under 
hostile fire, on the Tripoli coast, an American squadron, in July, 
1804, bombarded Tripoli, and then maintained a blockade, forcing 
the bey to satisfactory terms in June, 1805. In 1816 Lord Exmouth 
compelled the bey to abolish Christian slavery, and the piratical 
state came again under full Turkish authority in 1835. About the 
middle of the 19th century a "prophet" named Senusi arose, and 
on his death in i860 his son, styling himself the " Mahdi " ("the 
guided, well-directed, one "), or Moslem Messiah for the restoration 
of all things, gained a large following in northern Africa, com- 
posed of austere fanatics banded in hostility to foreign and infidel 
influences. 

Algeria, the capital of which was built early in the 10th century 
by an Arab chief, was split up into many small territories late in 
the 13th century, after being long ruled by the Almohades dynasty 
whom we have met in Spanish history. Its career as a piratical 
state began, early in the 16th century, after the expulsion from Spain 
of the Moors and Jews, who settled in Algeria, and avenged them- 
selves by preying on the commerce of Christians. The city was 
taken by Ferdinand of Spain ; on his death it was occupied by the 
famous corsair Barbarossa, who left it in 1535 to become High 
Admiral of the Ottoman Empire. His successors Dragut, Sinan, 
and others kept up the game of piracy with great success, encouraged 
by the utter failure of Charles V.'s great expedition in 1541. 
Under the rule of Pashas or Ueys, subject to the Porte at Constan- 
tinople, the audacious sea-robbery continued, to the disgrace of the 
European nations — the British, Dutch, Spaniards, and French — 
whose commercial interests were most concerned, until Lord Ex- 
mouth, as we have seen, inflicted a heavy blow in 18 16. Even 
then Algerine piracy was not wholly stayed, and its end came only 
with French conquest. In 1829 the Dey, after a two-years' blockade 
of Algiers by a French squadron, dismissed a French envoy and 
fired upon his ship as he sailed away under a flag of truce. Open 



Northern Africa 693 

war was inevitable after such an outrage, and in May, 1830, a large 
fleet sailed from Toulon, with over 40,000 men aboard, including 
cavalry and artillery. Landing with little opposition, the invaders 
severely defeated an army of Arabs and Kabyles, a branch of the 
great Berber race of northern Africa, and forced the surrender of 
the city of Algiers, after a bombardment, early in July. The Dey, 
with his family, suite, and goods, sailed for Naples in a French 
frigate, and Algeria saw no more of Mohammedan rule. The story 
of French conquest cannot be given in detail. It is one not to the 
credit of the conquerors, being marked on their part by incapacity, 
cruelty, and perfidy seldom equalled in history. One famous 
commander after another, as Clausel and D'Erlon, failed in the 
attempt to subdue the tribes of the interior, roused by the 
" Marabouts " (devotees or ascetics) to a " holy war," in which a 
leading part was played by Abd-el-Kadr, emir of the Arab tribes of 
the province of Oran, and one of the noblest characters of modern 
history. With grand persistence and great strategical ability, this hero 
of Islam, from 1832 to 1847, fought the French, rallying swiftly after 
defeat, and baffling his foes by rapidity of movement. In June, 
1835, he severely defeated a large French army at the river Maska, 
and won another brilliant victory in May, 1837, in the plain of the 
Metija. In spite of every effort, Abd-el-Kadr was compelled, by 
overwhelming numbers, sweeping the country in movable columns, 
to retire, in 1841, into Morocco. Emerging thence with fresh 
armies, in 1843 and 1844, he was defeated by the Due dAumale 
and by General Bugeaud, and, in December, 1847, recognising the 
inevitable, and desirous of ending useless bloodshed, the brave 
leader surrendered himself to General Lamoriciere, becoming a 
captive in France for five years, in direct violation of the terms 
of capitulation ; liberated in 1852 by Louis Napoleon, with a large 
life-pension ; earning the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour for 
his signal services in defending Christians during the Damascus 
massacres of i860 ; and ending his days at that city in 1883. After 
the departure of Abd-el-Kadr, Algeria served the French, in many 
years of wretched guerilla-contests, as a school of warfare for armies 
under Pelissier, Canrobert, St. Arnaud, MacMahon, and other com- 
manders afterwards distinguished in nobler scenes of action. The 
French rulers could not or would not conciliate ; the French people 
cannot, in the true sense, colonise ; and Algeria has always been, as 
it remains, a costly possession. In 1870, under the Third Republic 
in France, a step forward was made by the abolition of the old 



694 A History of the World 

military government, and the country now enjoys peace and some 
degree of prosperity. 

Morocco, a country inhabited by the most fanatical of all adhe- 
rents of Islam, was formed into one empire in 1692 under Muley 
(Mulai, "my Lord") Ismail, after being subject to many successive 
dynasties since the 8th century, with almost continuous civil and 
foreign wars and revolutions. This most backward of semi-civilised 
countries, freed from Christian slavery and government-piracy since 
1822, has still piratical subjects, and a slave-trade in full vigour, 
with negroes openly sold in the streets of the ports and in the 
market-towns of the interior. In 1859 war with Spain arose through 
the attacks of Moorish mountain-tribes on Spanish fortified posts on 
the Mediterranean shores, as Ceuta (opposite to Gibraltar), taken by 
Spain in 1580, Melilla, and Alhucemas. The Spanish forces, under 
Marshal O'Donnell and General Prim, landed at Ceuta at the end 
of the year, after the place had been subject to many attacks of the 
enemy, and the Spanish troops there had suffered severe loss from 
desultory fighting, and from cholera and other disease. In the first 
days of i860, during an advance southwards on Tetuan, the Moors 
were defeated at Castillejos, and on February 4th a strong position 
in front of Tetuan, held by 30,000 men, was brilliantly stormed by 
the Spaniards, and the town was occupied three days later. The 
enemy then began to negotiate, really preparing to renew the struggle, 
and at the end of March fighting, successful for the invaders, took 
place to the south-west of Tetuan, the Moors being driven, after an 
obstinate resistance — sabre to bayonet — from strong heights dotted 
with villages. Peace was then concluded with the payment of 
,£4,000,000 war-indemnity to Spain, and some surrender of territory. 

Chapter II. — Soudan ; Abyssinia. 

The British war in the Soudan was the direct consequence of our 
occupation of Egypt, and the assumption of responsibility in that 
region. Nubia, formerly a part of Ethiopia, and extending on both 
sides of the Nile from Egypt to Abyssinia, and between the Red 
Sea in the east and the desert on the west, has of late been styled 
" Egyptian Soudan," a term applied to Nubia in its widest sense, 
from Assouan to Uongola, and thence to equatorial Africa. The 
country, now occupied by mixed Arab and negro people, was 
conquered by Arabs in the 14th century. The various tribes, 
mostly active and warlike, are Mohammedans in religion, and till 



Soudan 695 

1820 were ruled by their own chiefs. During the next half-century 
Egypt gained control of the provinces lying west and south of 
Khartoum. In 1874-75 Dar-Fur was annexed, and insurrections 
there were crushed in succession by General Gordon and by Gessi, 
an Italian officer, in 1877-79. In 1882 a new revolt occurred under 
the leadership of another " Mahdi," Mohammed Ahmed, born in 
Dongola about 1842, who was once in the civil service of Egypt, 
and then became a trader and a slave-dealer. The eastern Soudan 
was stirred by the call of a man who, at the prophetic age of 40, 
after 15 years of fasting and retirement, came forward as a 
" Messiah " whose mission it was to free Islam from external foes, 
and to restore the pure original faith. Early in 1883 he seized 
El'-Obeyd, the chief city of Kordofan, as his capital, and in November 
of that year he utterly destroyed an army of Egyptian troops 
commanded by the English " Hicks Pasha," an officer in the service 
of the Khedive. The Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan, at Dongola, 
Sinkat, and other places, were then in imminent danger. In 
January, 1884, General Gordon went out, at the instance of the 
British government, to arrange with the Mahdi for the peaceful 
withdrawal of the garrisons, as the Khedive had agreed to give 
up all the Soudan territory except the Red Sea coast. No terms 
could be made, and Gordon, with the Egyptian garrison, became 
closely beleaguered at Khartoum by the Mahdi's forces. In the 
eastern Soudan three Egyptian armies were routed by the Soudanese 
forces near Suakin, and at El-Teb and Tamanieh, but these disasters 
were retrieved by the victories of a British force under General 
Graham early in 1884, and Suakin, on the Red Sea, was permanently 
garrisoned. The expedition sent out in August, 1884, under Lord 
Wolseley, making its way up the Nile, and then, as it crossed the 
desert by a short cut, winning the desperate battles of Abu-Klea 
and Metammeh, in January, 1885, was too late, by three days, to 
save Gordon. Treachery inside Khartoum had been his ruin, and 
he was murdered two days before the steamers, fighting their way up 
against the batteries, reached the town where the Mahdi's flag was 
seen floating over the walls. This disaster has been generally 
attributed to the vacillations of a divided Cabinet. The Arab 
spearmen, in their charges against our troops, armed with the 
breechloader, and aided by Gatling guns, showed themselves as 
the bravest and most athletic warriors that ever put British courage 
and skill to the test. Among incidents of the warfare were the fall, 
at Abu-Klea, of Colonel " Burnaby of the Blues," the hero of the 



696 A History of the World 

" ride to Khiva," fighting as a volunteer ; the fatal wounding of 
General Sir Herbert Stewart at Metammeh ; and the breaking, in 
the battle of Tamasi, in the eastern Soudan, of a British square 
by a fierce rush of the Arabs, an occurrence followed by the skilful 
and successful use of the bayonet on the part of our young soldiers. 
The Mahdi died in 1885, and the Soudan became, for many years, 
a scene of horrible tyranny and bloodshed under his successor 
Osman Digna. The fall of Khartoum ended for the time all 
Egyptian power to the south of Assouan. 

Eleven years later an advance of Egyptian forces took place, 
under the command of the able Sir Herbert Kitchener, " Sirdar " 
of the Khedive's army. It was thought well to demonstrate the 
new military strength of Egypt under British rule, with a view to a 
moral effect in various quarters, and to the ultimate reoccupation 
of Khartoum, the fall of which, in the face of British efforts at relief, 
had acted badly for us on the minds of Mohammedan subjects in 
India. The campaign was opened in the spring of 1896, closely 
following on the utter defeat of General Baratieri, the Italian 
commander in Abyssinia, by a native force, another event baneful to 
European influence in Africa. It was also desirable to secure 
the upper Nile valley against the raids of the "Dervishes," the 
Mahdist followers of Osman Digna. A railway had been made 
from Wadi Haifa to Sarras, 35 miles southwards, and this was to be 
pushed on to Akasha, as an advanced base of operations. The 
force was composed solely of Soudanese and Egyptian battalions, 
under British officers, and these men, on June. 7th, 1896, well 
directed by Kitchener and his subordinates, attacked the Dervishes 
at Ferkeh, 18 miles south of Akasha, and won a complete victory. 
The large village, extending for a mile along the Nile bank, was 
stormed in fine style by the infantry, bayonet in hand, with a loss 
to the enemy of about 50 emirs and 2,000 men. A close pursuit gave 
the victors possession of Suarda, nearly 40 miles south of Ferkeh, 
and on September 23rd Dongola was occupied without resistance. 
The next step was to follow up the re-conquest of Dongola province 
with an advance on Khartoum. In the campaign of 1897 Abu 
Hamed was gallantly taken by the Soudanese and Egyptian troops, 
under General Hunter, and this success was followed by the 
occupation of Berber, the retreat of the Dervishes to Metammeh, 
the revival of trade, the joy of natives released from Dervish 
despotism, the reopening of the route between Suakin and Berber, 
and the advance of the railway southwards through the desert, in 



Abyssinia 697 

preparation for another campaign. Before the year 1898 opened, 
several minor defeats had been inflicted on the enemy, and the news 
of great Dervish preparations caused the dispatch of some British 
regiments to the front. In the first days of January, 1898, battalions 
of the Royal Warwickshire, the Lincolnshire, and of the Cameron 
and the Seaforth Highlanders, were sent forward, with the 21st 
Lancers and a good supply of Maxims and field-guns. The enemy 
advanced from Metammeh to the Atbara river, which runs into the 
Nile about 25 miles south of Berber, and took up a position on the 
northern bank within entrenchments three miles in length, with 
rifle-pits constructed round a hill. After some sharp cavalry-work, 
and vain attempts to entice the enemy out of their works by 
shelling, Sir Herbert Kitchener resolved to attack. On Good 
Friday, April 8th, 1898, the strong position, after two hours' shelling, 
was stormed in the most brilliant manner, with a loss to the defeated 
of 3,000 killed, 4,000 prisoners, and the capture of the emir Mahmud, 
one of the chief commanders, and of all the cannon, flags, and 
ammunition. The total loss of the victors at this " battle of the 
Atbara," in a force composed of 3,500 British and 14,000 Soudanese 
and Egyptian troops, was over 500, of whom in were British, 
including three officers killed, and about 15 wounded. This great 
success ended the operations on the approach of the terrible 
summer-heat in that region, the troops returning into quarters 
northwards until the rise of the Nile in the autumn should enable 
gunboats, heavily armed, to act against the formidable works at 
Omdurman and Khartoum. 

Abyssinia has, in the 19th century, aroused much interest. This 
ancient empire includes the territories of Tigre, in the north-east ; 
Amhara, in the west and centre ; and Shoa, in the south, which have 
been, at various times, separate kingdoms. Since the introduction 
of Christianity in the 4th century, the people have been members 
of the Alexandrian Church, with a head (Abuna) consecrated by the 
patriarch of that communion. An empire or kingdom of Axum, 
the ruined capital of which now lies in the modern province of 
Tigre, became great and prosperous in the 6th century, with the 
rule of all Abyssinia, and of Yemen and Saba in Arabia, and the 
control of the Red Sea. The empire was the farthest point south- 
ward reached by Greek civilisation, and also the outermost post of 
Christianity in that age. Mohammedan conquest confined the 
Abyssinians to the interior tableland, and cut them off for a long 
period from intercourse with the rest of the world. The capital 



698 A History of the World 

was removed from Axum to Gondar, and the monarchs then assumed 
a tide {Negus, with a lengthy affix) meaning " king of kings of 
Ethiopia." In the 16th century, warlike Galla tribes from inner 
Africa began a series of devastating raids, and in course of time 
the monarchy was broken up into several independent realms. 
About 1850 an able adventurer arose in Amhara, and in the course 
of five years overcame various native potentates, and was crowned 
by the Abuna, or head of the Church, as " Negus of Abyssinia," by 
the name of Theodore. After the conquest of Shoa he was master 
of the whole country, and ruled with wisdom for some time under 
the guidance of two British residents, Mr. Plowden and Mr. Bell, 
the former of whom was consul. In i860 they perished by the 
arms of a rebel chief, and Theodore soon became tyrannical, sup- 
ported by an immense army, the cost of which caused oppressive 
taxation. Rebellions in the provinces were crushed with the utmost 
cruelty, and the monarch's enmity to Europeans was aroused by 
his failure to obtain British and French aid against Moslem hostile 
neighbours in the Soudan. Captain Cameron, British consul at 
Massowah, on the Red Sea, received from the emperor, in 1862, 
a letter addressed to Queen Victoria. It was duly transmitted to 
Lord John Russell, then Foreign Secretary, placed in a " pigeon- 
hole," and forgotten. This piece of neglect was costly to the state. 
Theodore was enraged at what he deemed to be insulting treatment, 
and made prisoners of Cameron and other consuls, "with the mis- 
sionaries and other foreign residents, following this up by the seizure 
of an envoy, Mr. Rassam, sent by our government, in 1864, from 
Aden, to treat for the release of the captives. Negotiation, backed 
by presents, was a failure, and the prisoners were all shut up in the 
strong rock-fortress of Magdala. The matter was much discussed 
in the Indian bazaars, and when remonstrances and threats were 
futile, forcible measures were adopted. Sir Robert Napier, a dis- 
tinguished officer of engineers, who had done good service in the 
Sepoy war, took 16,000 men of all arms, with as many of the 
transport-service and camp-followers, from Bombay, and landed 
them at Annesley Bay in the early spring of 1868. The expedition 
was a triumph of organisation and good management. There was 
little fighting, as the people of the country, hating the tyrant, 
welcomed the invaders, and the only difficulties, and those great 
ones, were presented by a march of 400 miles through a very 
mountainous and rugged country, with the necessity of storing and 
guarding provisions at various points, and of keeping up communi- 




-' 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 699 

cation with the sea-base of operations. At the Arogee Pass, on 
April 10th, some thousands of gaily clad Abyssinian horsemen 
rushed down upon a detached body of the British, to be slaughtered 
in heaps and quickly driven off under the fire of breechloaders. 
The panic caused by this defeat caused the prompt surrender of the 
prisoners ; but Napier, resolved to complete his work, still marched 
on Magdala, which was taken with little resistance. The dead body 
of Theodore, slain by a pistol-shot from his own hand, lay inside 
the gate. The victor became Lord Napier of Magdala, rose to be 
commander-in-chief in India, and died in 1890 Governor of the 
Tower. The cost of the expedition reached about ^9,000,000 sterling. 
The death of Theodore was followed by struggles for supremacy 
among rival chieftains. A prince of Tigre became emperor in 1872, 
and was at war with Egypt in 1875, the contest continuing in a 
desultory way until the evacuation of the Soudan in 1882. Italy 
began to aspire to territorial possession in that part of the world, 
and occupied Massowah in 1885. Warfare with the Abyssinians, 
with alternate success, ensued, and in May, 1889, a treaty was made 
by which the Italians, in their interpretation, constituted Abyssinia 
a "protectorate." On the death of the "Negus," John II., in the 
same year, Menelek II., king of Shoa, became supreme ruler. 
Certain territories, in 1891, were surrendered to the Italians, who 
constituted their possessions on the Red Sea, between 1890 and 
1894, as the "colony of Eritrea." In 1893 King Menelek "de- 
nounced" the treaty concerning an Abyssinian protectorate, and 
war ensued. On March 1st, 1896, the native forces under Italian 
officers were almost destroyed in a battle near Adowa, and a treaty 
then recognised the complete independence of Abyssinia. 



Chapter III. — British and other European Possessions in 

Africa. 

Until the 19th century the interior of Africa was almost unknown 
to the rest of the world. Modern exploration in the vast dark 
continent began with James Bruce, who discovered one source of 
the " Blue " Nile in Abyssinia in 1780, and aroused the spirit which 
sent Ledyard, Mungo Park, and other adventurous travellers to the 
basin of the Niger. In the third ani fourth decades of the 19th 
century Denham, an old Peninsular officer, Clapperton, of the 
royal navy, Dr. Oudney, and the brothers Richard and John 
Lander, in the Sahara and Soudan, discovered Lake Tchad and 



7<do A History of the World 

the course of the Niger. About 1840, after discoveries made in 
South Africa by Dutchmen from Cape Colony, the eminent mis- 
sionaries Moffat and Livingstone began to work in that region, the 
latter being one of the greatest of African discoverers. Between 
1843 and his death in 1873, Livingstone made known the existence 
of Lakes Ngami and Dilolo, and of the river Zambesi, and crossed 
the continent from the Portuguese town of St. Paul de Loanda, the 
capital of Angola, to Quillimane, on the northern mouth of the 
Zambesi, being the first European who ever traversed the continent 
from ocean to ocean in those latitudes, and discovering on that 
journey the dividing plateau, from 5,000 to 7,000 feet above sea- 
level, which forms the watershed between central and southern 
Africa. He also accurately mapped Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 
and discovered Lakes Liemba, Moero, and Bangweolo, with the 
head-waters of the Congo, there called the Luapula and at another 
point the Lualaba. It was the great United States traveller 
H. M. Stanley who, specially commissioned by the proprietor of 
the New York Herald, found Livingstone alive in November, 187 1, 
at Ujiji, on the eastern side of Lake Tanganyika, after false reports 
of his death, at the hands of natives, had reached Europe in 1867. 
The great Scottish explorer, Livingstone, dying at Ujiji on May 1st, 
1873, was laid in Westminster Abbey in April, 1874. Mr. Stanley, 
in later journeys full of risk and adventure, mapped out the shores 
of .Lake Tanganyika, settled finally the origin, course, and size of 
the Congo, tracing it from Nyangwe, on the Lualaba (which he 
proved to be the Congo), down to the sea, and made many other 
discoveries in the basin of that great river. We must note that 
Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza were discovered by Captains 
Burton and Speke in 1857 and 1858, and that the successive efforts 
of those travellers and of Colonel Grant and Sir Samuel Baker 
(the discoverer of Albert Nyanza lake) made known the course of 
the Upper Nile, and its rise in Lake Victoria Nyanza, thus solving 
the problem which had been a puzzle for thousands of years to 
geographers. There have been many other explorers of the continent 
— German, French, British, and Portuguese — and the map of Africa, 
almost a blank in most of the interior, so far as accurate knowledge 
was concerned, at the beginning of the 19th century, has now been 
fairly filled in. 

The successful exploration of the continent was followed, towards 
the end of the 19th century, by the remarkable "scramble" of 
European nations for territorial possession which ended in the 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 701 

" Partition of Africa," as shown on the map, making the vast region 
a diplomatic battle-ground of the present day, and a political, 
colonial, and commercial problem of the future. In the course of 
European rivalries we hear much of " Hinterlands," or back-regions, 
and of " spheres of influence " ; the former being understood to 
represent the fields of expansion which may be regarded as geo- 
graphically or politically connected with the coast-regions held by 
various Powers, and the latter being the territories in which it is 
assumed that any European nation has exclusive political rights, 
by treaty with native chiefs, or with other European nations, or 
with both combined. Spain, in the western Sahara, and in the 
Canaries and some other islands, has about 200,000 square miles as 
her share. Portugal, in Angola, on the west coast, and Mozambique, 
on the east, holds about 850,000 square miles. Germany, in the 
Cameroons, on the west coast, and in the south-west and on the 
east coast, has nearly the same area. Italy, in Somali-land and 
Galla, in the north-east, has a large area of indefinite extent. 
Belgian Africa, the " Congo State," has an area exceeding 850,000 
square miles. France, in Tunis, Algeria, the Sahara, the Gold and 
Benin Coasts, Soudan, Guinea, the French Congo territory, and 
Madagascar, is mistress of about 3,000,000 square miles. Great 
Britain claims and holds or " protects" over 2,500,000 square miles 
in Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Lagos, Niger Territories, 
Oil Rivers, and British South, Central, and Eastern Africa. The 
rest of Africa, the whole continent having about 11,500,000 square 
miles, is made up of Turkish territory in Tripoli and Egypt ; the 
two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State ; 
Liberia, the negro-republic, on the west coast ; Morocco ; Abyssinia ; 
the native state Wadai, between Lake Tchad and Dar-Fur; the 
Fulah states, in the western Soudan, including Sokoto ; the small 
sultanate of Zanzibar, on the east coast ; and various native interior 
states of vague limits, a ready prey for the encroachments of 
European Powers when the time for absorption arrives. The 
"Partition of Africa," as above indicated, was peacefully arranged 
among the chief European nations between 1876, the year of the 
"Brussels Conference," and 1893, though, even in the summer of 
1898, Anglo-French commissioners in Paris were engaged in settling 
disputes concerning the borders of territory in the Niger region. 

British connection with territory in Africa began in 1530, with 
the enterprises of an " African Company," a joint-stock association. 
The western coast was first settled, by the Portuguese, at the close 



7<D2 A History of the World 

of the 15th century. They were expelled from Cape Coast Castle 
by the Dutch, who were ousted by the British in 1667, under the 
Treaty of Breda. Our traders were in Gambia as settlers before 
the close of the 16th century, and the French, about the beginning 
of the 17th, appeared on the Senegal. The Treaty of Versailles, 
in 1783, secured the Gambia trade for Great Britain, and France 
had then the sole rights in the river Senegal. Sierra Leone, dis- 
covered in 1462 by a Portuguese navigator, was occupied in 1787, 
under British influence, by a colony of freed negroes. The " African 
Company of Merchants " were in possession of the Gold Coast 
settlements, with a large annual parliamentary grant, from 1750 
until the dissolution of the corporation in 182 1, when the Crown 
took possession of the settlements and forts, placing them in charge 
of the governor of Sierra Leone. 

Serious trouble soon arose with a powerful negro-people called 
the Ashantis, having an army of great strength, and Kumassi as the 
capital. A kindred people, the Fantis, allies of the British, suffered 
from Ashanti tyranny, and Sir Charles MacCarthy, governor of the 
British territory, took action against the oppressors. In January, 
1824, he was defeated and killed in battle with a great host, all the 
British officers, except two, being taken or slain. In May a new 
governor, after hard fighting, drove the enemy, away from the coast, 
and in July, with reinforcements from England, inflicted a great 
defeat. In August, 1826, another fierce and now a decisive battle 
ended in the capture of the Ashanti king's state-umbrella and of 
his talisman, which proved to be the skull of MacCarthy, wrapped in 
paper covered with Arabic characters, then in a silk handkerchief, 
and lastly in leopard-skin. The enemy were routed with the loss 
of some thousands of men. In 1850 some Danish settlements at 
Accra, Quittah, Addah, and elsewhere were added, by purchase, 
to our Gold Coast territory, and in 1872 Holland transferred all 
her rights in that region, with the forts at Elmina, to British pos- 
session. After trouble with the Ashantis in 1863, and the failure 
of a British expedition from disease, a decisive struggle came ten 
years later in a quarrel with King Koffee Kalkalli. In December, 
1872, he invaded the British protectorate with a great army, and 
crossed the boundary-river Prah in January, 1873. The Fantis, 
our allies, were twice defeated, and the enemy marched on Elmina, 
to be severely repulsed by our seamen, marines, and colonial troops. 
An effective blow was resolved on in London, and Sir Garnet 
Wolseley took out some of our best regiments, including the 42nd 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 703 

Highlanders (the famous " Black Watch ") and the 23rd or Welsh 
Fusiliers. In an expedition conducted with consummate ability, 
the Ashantis were first driven back towards the Prah by Wolseley 
heading West Indian troops, seamen, and marines, and native levies 
including the brave and faithful Haussas, Mohammedan people of 
the Soudan, now largely employed oh the Gold Coast for defence 
and for the maintenance of order. In January, 1874, the British 
regiments and the other forces crossed the Prah, and, winning in 
the jungle the hard-fought battle of Amoaful, they captured and 
burnt Kumassi, forcing the Ashanti king to renounce all his claims 
on the British " protectorate," to undertake the protection of traders, 
the abolition of his foul and cruel human sacrifices, and the main- 
tenance of a road from his capital to the Prah. Trouble arose with 
his successor, King Prempeh, in 1895, as to the non-abolition of 
the human sacrifices, and in January, 1896, another force from 
England, with native troops, crossed the Prah, and, meeting with 
no resistance, entered Kumassi. The British governor, Sir W. E. 
Maxwell, received the humble submission of Prempeh, who was at 
once dethroned and carried off as a prisoner, with the practical 
annexation of his territory, and the destruction of the fetish houses 
and groves for sacrifice. Malarial fever among the troops caused 
some loss, including the untimely and lamented death of Prince 
Henry of Battenberg, husband of Princess Beatrice. A British 
Resident was established at Kumassi, as the capital of our "protec- 
torate," and a firm hold of the place was secured by the erection 
of a stone and brick fort in the centre of the town, with a clear 
space of 200 yards on every side, for the free action of the " Maxims " 
mounted on the turrets. Civilisation and Christianity were, for the 
first time, installed in the country, to the benefit and the delight of 
natives freed from a cruel tyrant, and a good firm road, with shelters 
at different points on the route, was made between the capital and 
the coast. 

In 1886 "Gold Coast Colony" was finally separated from Sierra 
Leone, with Accra as the seat of government, and Elmina, Addah, 
and Cape Coast Castle as the chief places of the trade in palm-oil, 
palm-kernels, indiarubber, and gold, found in small grains and 
nuggets amidst gravel or red loam, in the sand of streams, and in 
quartz. Lagos, formerly a centre of the slave-trade, was annexed 
by our government in 1861, when the native king refused aid to 
our efforts to suppress the traffic. It became a distinct " Crown 
Colony" in 1886, increased by the annexation of districts adjacent 



704 A History of the World 

to the island of Lagos and of some petty native kingdoms, Gambia 
became a separate colony in 1888, as did Sierra Leone, largely 
•peopled by the descendants of negroes from almost every tribe on 
the western and south-western coasts of Africa, captured for freedom 
by British cruisers as they were being conveyed across the Atlantic 
to the markets of the United States, the foreign West Indies, and 
Brazil. Some of these people have shown high intelligence, one 
becoming a bishop, and two archdeacons, in the Anglican Church, 
and others rising to good positions as lawyers and civil servants. 
Samuel Adjai Crowther, carried off as a slave in 181 9, at seven years 
of age, and rescued by a British cruiser in 1822, was ordained in 
London 20 years later, and working with great zeal and ability in 
the mission-field, he w r as consecrated as bishop of the Niger 
Territory in 1864, with the degree of D.D. conferred in honour by 
the University of Oxford. He translated the Bible into the Yoruba 
language, spoken by a large population north-east of Dahomey. 

The " Niger Territories " is the official name of a region supposed 
to be 500,000 square miles in area, with a population of over 
20,000,000, on the middle and the lower courses of the great river. 
The territory and " sphere of influence " include the native " empire " 
of Sokoto and the kingdom of Borgu, all being controlled by the 
Royal Niger Company, chartered by the Crown in 1886. The 
French and German spheres of influence lie to the north and east. 
The capital is Asaba, 70 miles above Abo, at the head of the great 
Niger delta, Akassa being the chief coast-port, and Lokoja, at the 
junction of the Niger and Binue, the headquarters of the strong 
Haussa military force under British officers. The Niger Company 
has already, under the able management of its President, Sir G. T. 
Goldie, "made history" with great credit Early in 1897 they 
were at war with the powerful Sultan of Nupe, a chief of the 
Fulahs, Mohammedan conquerors and slave-raiders from the north. 
His daring encroachments caused the dispatch of an expedition, 
admirably planned by Goldie. With Lokoja as the base of opera- 
tions, an advance was made on Bida, the chief's capital and principal 
stronghold, and complete success was obtained. The Fulah power 
was annihilated in that region in the destruction of towns, the 
capture of vast stores, the rescue of slaves, and finally, after fierce 
fighting of the Haussas with immense bodies of the enemy, in the 
capture of Bida and of Ilorin, capital of the Yorubas, on the west 
of the Niger, allies of the Fulahs. On June 20th, " Diamond 
Jubilee " Day, 1897, a decree abolished slavery throughout the 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 705 

Niger Territories, and a new Emir or Sultan of Nupe was set up, 
in entire dependence on the Company. This brilliant little cam- 
paign has a real historical importance in being the first instance of 
the conquest of a Mohammedan kingdom in the Soudan, with the 
abolition of slave-raiding in a fine fertile territory, now free for 
peaceful tillage and trade. 

The Oil Rivers or Niger Coast Protectorate was established, in 
its first form, in 1884, in a district between Lagos colony and Yoruba 
on the north-west, and the German boundary of Cameroons on the 
east. In 1891 it came under the control of the Foreign Office as 
an " Imperial " protectorate, with trade carried on by an " African 
Association " of Liverpool and other merchants engaged in the 
palm-oil commerce. Early in 1897 the treacherous massacre of 
some British officials, including Mr. Phillips, the acting Consul- 
General ; Major Crawford, Deputy-Commissioner ; Mr. Campbell, 
a member of the consular staff; Dr. Elliot, the medical officer ; two 
British merchants, and a large number of native carriers, on their way, 
in peaceful fashion, to Benin, for an interview with the king, was 
promptly and severely punished. The territory of Benin was 
governed by a king whose fetish-priests freely indulged in human 
sacrifices by decapitation and crucifixion, and the mission, advancing 
in the face of warnings received, was to treat with him, firstly, on 
the subject of obstacles to interior trade. In the thick bush the 
party were attacked and almost destroyed by musketry and the 
sword, Captain Boisragon and Commissioner Locke being the sole 
European survivors, creeping wounded into the bush amidst the con- 
fusion, and subsisting on bananas and dew for five days until they 
were rescued by friendly natives on the Benin river. Admiral 
Rawson, of the Cape, and West African squadron, then organised and 
led an expedition composed of Haussas of the Protectorate force, 
marines from England, and a naval brigade, with 7-pounder guns, 
" Maxims," and rocket-tubes. Proceeding first in boats up the 
Benin river and its branches, and overland, the British force captured 
several towns, and then, with severe bush-fighting, made their way 
to the chief town, Benin, concluding the work with a splendid charge 
at the " double," loudly cheering, amid cannon-shot and a hail of 
rifle-bullets from loopholed houses and the shelter of trees. At 
the end of the broad avenue thus traversed the assailants found 
themselves in the royal " compound " or palace-garden. The town 
was reeking with the blood and bodies of human sacrifices. The 
houses of the fetish-priests and the crucifixion-trees were destroyed. 



706 A History of the World 

The king escaped for the time beyond reach of pursuit, but he came 
in from the bush in August, and was carried round the coast-towns 
in fetters and exhibited among the natives who had declined to 
believe in his conquest and capture. A great moral effect was pro- 
duced by this instance of just and signal punishment. Benin was 
left in charge of a strong Haussa garrison, with " Maxims " and field- 
guns, and the former scene of hideous cruelty is now a civilised 
centre, in perfect peace and order, with a fortnightly post to and 
from England. The above narratives concerning Ashanti, Bida, and 
Benin illustrate at once the conditions of warfare in western Africa, 
and the benefits of European conquest. We note that above 700 
cases of malarial fever, contracted during the expedition to Benin, 
occurred afterwards on board the vessels of the British squadron. 

The only history of importance, as regards French possessions 
in this part of the world, is connected with Senegambia, Timbuktu, 
and Dahomey. The French colonial dominion in that quarter, 
after a long period of inactivity or decline, began a new career with 
the appointment as governor, in 1854, of General Faidherbe, a man 
who afterwards took a distinguished part, as we have seen, in the 
Franco-German war of 1870-71. He adopted a vigorous policy, 
subduing chiefs who stayed the French advance inland, and annexing 
their territories, and his successors, pursuing the same course, made 
rapid advances, annexing districts, and proclaiming " protectorates." 
In December, 1893, a French column occupied and held Timbuktu, 
long a goal of their country's ambition in that region. The place, 
containing a mosque dating from 1325, lies on the southern edge 
of the Sahara, on an important trade-route between the interior 
and the west and south. Probably founded in the nth century, 
and first known outside Africa in the 14th, it had only been visited, 
up to 1892, by six or seven Europeans. It was in 1862 that France 
gained a foothold on the Guinea coast by assuming a protectorate 
over the trading-post of Porto Novo and the adjacent territory. 
The region had been considered a part of the kingdom of Dahomey, ' 
a realm dating from early in the 18th century, which became 
powerful in the first half of the 19th, with a large army of warriors 
and a battalion of brave women, devoted to celibacy, and ferocious 
in fight, the famous " Amazons." The fetish-worship involved the 
wholesale murder of foreign captives and others as sacrifices, as 
many as 500 human victims being slain at one of the grand 
" customs " in October of each year. The power of the despotic 
king had greatly declined at the time of French aggression, and his 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 707 

attack on Porto Novo in 1890 was easily repulsed. The monarch 
then began to purchase European artillery and breechloading rifles, 
in the hope that these weapons would place his men on an equality 
with their foes. In the summer of 1892 his forces invaded the 
Porto Novo district, burning some villages and carrying off prisoners 
for sacrifice or slavery. A French gunboat was fired on in one of 
the streams, and the French settlements were soon threatened by 
bodies of Dahomeyan negroes, mostly armed with modern rifles 
and in some cases several thousands strong. The receipt of a letter, 
in French, expressing insolent defiance, by the governor of the Benin 
coast, from the king of Dahomey, was quickly followed by the 
arrival of reinforcements from France and Senegal, including some 
companies of excellent African troops — Senegalese tirailleurs — 
officered by Frenchmen. The force was under the command of 
the able Colonel Dodds, of English extraction, born in Senegal, 
and in no fear of the West African climate. Trained at a French 
military college, he had seen much service in campaigns on the 
Upper Senegal and in the western Soudan. The Dahomey capital, 
Abomey, lay about 70 miles direct from the coast, in a region of fer- 
tile undulating plains, guarded from an invader's approach by swamps 
and a broad belt of forest. The king of Dahomey was supposed to 
be able to bring forward about 12,000 male warriors and 1,500 
Amazons. Dodds had, of European troops, 150 marines and 800 
of the " Foreign Legion," in addition to 1,500 Senegalese riflemen 
and 300 Haussas, with engineers, mountain-guns, a few cavalry, and 
a transport and ambulance detachment, making in all 113 officers 
and 3.350 men. He had wisely made a careful study of Wolseley's 
successful Ashanti campaign, and all sanitary precautions against the 
deadly climate were taken, with quinine daily served out to the troops, 
and the very small quantity of brandy always drunk diluted with 
water or tea. On August 17th, 1892, after coast-garrisons had been 
provided, a column of 2,000 men, with 2,000 native porters, started 
from Porto Novo up the eastern bank of the river Oueme, with gun 
boats and barges in attendance. Much difficulty was encountered 
in the passage of streams with swampy banks, and in cutting down 
underwood and coarse grass, the latter being often six feet high. On 
September 14th, at Dogba, a point on the river 35 miles above Porto 
Novo, due north, a strong stockaded post was erected on a knoll, 
defended by a gunboat with machine-guns, and a fierce attack of 
the Dahomeyans in force was severely repulsed. The advance on 
Abomey was then resumed, and some fighting on the river took place 



708 A History of the World 

between the gunboats and the enemy's cannon and rifles on the banks. 
By a clever retreat at the right time, the French commander, evading 
a strong force entrenched in his front, and turning its flank, passed 
his men safely across to the western bank of the Oueme, about 50 
miles from the coast, and then struck out for Abomey, 35 miles 
away to the north-west. The way lay through tropical forest, and 
the difficulties of the march and the resistance were such that six 
weeks were needed to reach the capital, at a rate of less than a mile 
per day. On October 4th a sharp two-hours' action, at close 
quarters, amid the trees and long grass, ended in the retreat of the 
enemy, among the slain left on the ground being 1 7 " Amazons," 
tall, athletic young women, each with a breechloader and plenty 
of ammunition. More fighting came, and in six days only three 
miles of ground had been won. After a few days' delay to establish 
another fcrtified post, the advance was resumed, and on the march 
through a jungle of bush, long grass, and thickets of large trees, 
much fighting had to be done. On October 14th an attempt to 
turn another fortified position, defended by rifled guns served by 
trained men, ended in the forced retreat of a French column before 
masses of men and Amazons, including hundreds of good marks- 
men, professional hunters of big game. Water was lacking, and 
Dodds was hampered by 140 wounded and 60 fever-patients. A 
downpour of rain in the night staved off the chief peril ; an attack 
on the French camp was sharply repulsed ; and then for a week the 
two adversaries remained face to face. During this time the French 
sent their sick and wounded down to the coast, accumulated stores, 
found a good supply of water near their position, and received a 
reinforcement of 400 men from Porto Novo. On October 27th 
the king of Dahomey sent in a letter with a flag of truce, offering 
to evacuate a position in front, and drew the French, on the following 
day, into an ambuscade, where they met a severe artillery and rifle- 
fire. Furious at this treachery, Colonel Dodds' men carried the 
position with the bayonet, after a desperate struggle, and the victors, 
recruited by the week's rest, drove off the Amazons and the royal 
guard. The main line of defence was thus broken, and Abomey 
was now only 1 1 miles away to the front. The French, advancing 
in square, had four days' almost continuous bush-fighting near Cana, 
the sacred city and favourite residence of the kings, and in front of 
that town a real entreaty for peace was made. The end of this 
interesting contest between barbarism and civilisation was dramatic. 
General Dodds, as he had now become, demanded the king's 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 709 

unconditional surrender, and, when delay occurred, he resolved to 
occupy the capital. On November 15th, as he and his men 
approached the city through a pleasant country where tilled fields, 
pastures, and groves of palm had replaced the tropical forest, a 
column of smoke shot up from the midst of Abomey ; fires broke 
out in various quarters, and loud explosions shook the air. The 
king, Behanzin, had fled northwards, with a few hundred warriors, 
leaving a Dahomeyan " Moscow," the scene for a century of human 
sacrifices on a vast scale, to the victors. In a brief campaign at the 
close of 1893 and early in 1894 the deposed monarch was hunted 
down and taken, and the success of operations carefully planned 
prudently and skilfully carried out, and displaying much courage both 
in the invaders and invaded, was complete. Since that time the 
French have virtually ruled Dahomey, as a " protectorate " under a 
new king chosen by the chiefs. 

Cape Colony, settled by the Dutch in 1652, under the auspices 
of their East India Company, was founded in a region inhabited by 
low-type races named Hottentots and Bushmen (Bosjesmans) by 
Europeans, with whom the new-comers were soon at war. To the 
north-east and north lay various tribes of the great Bantu race, 
including several races of Kaffirs (Caffres or Kaffres, from the 
Arabic Kafir, unbeliever) — the Pondos, Fingos, Zulus, Swazi — and, 
extending northwards almost to the Somali and Swahili country of 
the east coast, were the Bechuanas, Basutos, Matabele, and many 
other nations. The Kaffirs are a fine, athletic race, whose highest 
form, in modern days, is found in the Zulus. The Bechuanas and 
Basutos, in the 19th century, have proved to be more advanced in 
civilisation than other peoples of South Africa. The Dutch colony 
at the Cape made slow progress, under the tyrannical rule of the 
Company, who greatly restricted private trade. The revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes, in 1688, by Louis XIV., brought a valuable acces- 
sion of immigrants in about 300 Huguenot refugees, the ancestors of 
a large element of the present South African Dutch, or " Africanders." 
About the middle of the 18th century, the colonists began to 
occupy large tracts of land in the interior, laying them out as 
" cattle-runs," and some trade was done in the export of wine to 
Europe, wheat to Batavia, in Java, and of skins and ostrich-feathers. 
The best days of the Dutch period of supremacy ended in 1771, 
with the death of the excellent governor Tulbagh, after a rule of 
20 years. The cruel treatment of slaves, and the hunting-down of 
Bushmen and Hottentots for compulsory service as herdsmen and 



yio A History of the World 

domestics, were evil features, and under the Company's rule the 
colonists near Cape Town were devoid alike of prosperity and 
freedom. In 1795, after the conquest of the home-country by 
France, a British expedition forced a capitulation, but in 1802, under 
the Treaty of Amiens, the territory was restored, though the chief 
purpose of conquest had been, in 1797, declared to be the occupa- 
tion of Cape Town as commanding the ocean-route to India. In 
1805 a census showed the colonists of European descent, exclusive 
of some thousands of Dutch troops, to be about 26,000, in addition 
to 30,000 slaves and 20,000 Bushmen, Hottentots, and half-breeds 
in semi-servitude. Little had been done to develop the resources 
of the country, and there were neither roads nor bridges worthy of 
the name. British conquest alone prevented a rising against the 
Company's rule, which had been a curse to the whole community. 
The seven years of British occupation from 1795 to 1802 had 
brought much improvement, and a new era opened with the arrival 
of a strong expedition, in January, 1806, off Cape Town. The 
Dutch troops, under General Janssens, the governor, with a battalion 
of French seamen and marines, were defeated with severe loss by 
our Highland regiments, and British possession of the colony began, 
confirmed in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. 

The history of the colony .was henceforth one of continuous 
progress. In 181 2 Graham's Town was founded. In 1820 and 
182 1 a body of 4,000 new settlers landed in Algoa Bay and founded 
Port Elizabeth. In 1828 a great judicial reform came in the estab- 
lishment of a Supreme Court of four judges appointed by the 
Crown, and of resident magistrates in place of the old Dutch 
officials in country-districts. In 1833 the Act abolishing slavery 
throughout the British colonial dominions, with compensation to 
the slave-owners, angered the Dutch " boers " or farmers, who 
grumbled at the amount awarded. In the same year partial repre- 
sentative government was conceded in the election by the people 
of some members of a new Legislative Council. In 1835 a series 
of " Kaffir wars " began with an invasion of the colony on the south- 
eastern frontier. The garrison of Cape Town, under the governor, 
Sir Benjamin D'Urban, and Colonel Smith, afterwards Sir Harry 
Smith, the victor of Aliwal and Sobraon, in the Sikh wars, aided by 
large numbers of the Boers, soon compelled the invaders to submit 
and pay compensation, in many thousands of cattle and 1,000 
horses, for the losses incurred by the settlers. A people called 
the Fingos, enslaved by the Kaffirs, were rescued at this time, and 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 7 1 1 

joyfully passed into the colony, where they became loyal and useful 
subjects. More Kaffir warfare was due to the folly of the Colonial 
Office in London, in checking D'Urban's plan for the establishment 
of a strong frontier after driving the natives beyond the Kei river. 
In 1846 a struggle occurred with the chief Sandili, and a British 
force was somewhat roughly handled in a sudden attack. Rein- 
forcements from England restored affairs, and in 1847 Sandili and 
another chief, Macomo, came into the British lines by voluntary 
surrender. Sir Harry Smith, as governor and " High Com- 
missioner," then proclaimed our rule over the region between the 
Kei and the Keiskama rivers as "British Kaffraria." In 1850 a 
representative government of two elective Chambers was established. 
In the same year Sandili started another long and a serious Kaffir 
war, in which our troops had many difficulties to 1 overcome. The 
enemy were severely dealt with .at the close of 185 1 and early in 
1852, and in this latter year, on the retirement of Sir Harry Smith, 
the new governor, Sir George Cathcart, a Waterloo veteran who 
afterwards fell at Inkermann, was in command of a large force of 
first-rate British troops. With these he swept the enemy away, and 
in March, 1853, received the submission of the leading Kaffir chiefs. 

A new era opened for Cape Colony on the conclusion of this 
long and costly contest. On July 1st, 1854, the first Parliament met 
at Cape Town, and the close of the year saw the installation as ruler 
of the ablest of all our colonial governors, apart from India, in 
Sir George Grey, who had been already an Australian explorer, 
and governor of South Australia and of New Zealand. His wise 
treatment conciliated the beaten Kaffirs, and his eight years' rule 
was a period of priceless service to the colony. Between 1861 and 
1870 the incorporation of British Kaffraria made the Kei river the 
eastern boundary, and diamonds were discovered in Griqualand West. 
In 1872 "responsible government" was established, and constitu- 
tional rule thus existed in its highest form. Three years later the 
census showed a population over 720,000, of whom about 237,000 
were of European descent. 

In 1877 the arrival of Sir Bartle Frere, formerly governor of* 
Bombay, as governor and " High Commissioner," caused the Zulu 
war, through his peremptory demand for the disbanding of Cetewayo's 
great native army. The chief incidents are well known : the 
disastrous defeat of our forces at Isandula (or Isandlana) ; the 
heroic defence of Rorke's Drift, on the Tugela river ; our victory 
in July, 1879, at Ulundi ; the capture of the brave Cetewayo. In 



712 A History of the World 

that year and 1880 Kaffir territory, including Fingoland, was annexed, 
and Griqualand West became part of the colony. 

The next event was the war with the Boers of the Transvaal, who 
had migrated from Cape Colony and founded an independent state as 
an oligarchical republic. The country was at the lowest point of 
financial distress when, in 1878, the British government, falsely 
informed as to the people's wishes, annexed the territory. This act 
was followed by a rebellion at the close of 1880 ; the defeat at several 
places of our forces, ill-led against marksmen of wonderful skill ; and 
the re-establishment of the Transvaal republic under a convention 
reserving a kind of suzerainty to Great Britain. In 1885 more 
territory was annexed, and in 1890 that remarkable man, Cecil J. 
Rhodes, became Premier. His aims as regards the extension of 
British power and territory in Africa are well known, and to his 
consent, in a moment when his better judgment was astray, was due 
the disastrous and lawless movement of the last days of 1895, known 
as the " Jameson Raid." The Transvaal republic, through the 
discovery of rich stores of gold, had assumed a new importance in 
the world, and under the rugged, shrewd, typical Boer, Paul Kriiger, 
as President, maintained a form of rule excluding the foreign element, 
thevast majority in numbers and the mainstay of prosperity, from any 
share of power. This treatment of the " Uitlanders," or Outlanders 
in Boer-English, caused the " Raid," ending in the defeat of the 
invaders at the little battle of Kriigersdorp, and the punishment, after 
trial in London, of Dr. Jameson and his chief associates by terms 
of imprisonment. The Commons committee of inquiry in 1897, 
condemning " the Raid," reported that " grave injury had been thereby 
caused to British influence in South Africa." In 1894 and 1895 the 
territory of Cape Colony had grown in the addition of West Pondo- 
land and of British Bechuanaland, the latter, with a Protectorate, 
forming a region nearly eight times the area of England. 

British South and Central Africa, or British Zambesia and 
Nyassaland, a vast region with an estimated area of 500,000 square 
miles, lying south and north of the great river Zambesi, the southern 
territory including Mashonaland and Matabeleland (the two forming 
" Rhodesia"), had its origin, as a political territory, in 1878, in the 
trading operations of a " Central Africa Company." The European 
" rush " for the partition of Africa caused the rise, in October, 1889, 
of a larger association, the " British South Africa Company," with 
Mr. Ctcil Rhodes, Premier of Cape Colony, as "managing director." 
Under a charter from the Crown, conferring large powers of adminis- 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 7 1 3 

tration, this Company set to work with energy to occupy its territories, 
and develop their resources. In 1888 a treaty made by Lo Ben- 
gula, the king of Matabeleland, with Sir Hercules Robinson (Lord 
Rosmead), governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for 
South Africa, had secured British influence against all native and 
foreign rivals. Warfare quickly followed the appearance of the new 
Company on the scene. The Matabele chieftain was ruler of a 
nation of about 200,000, composed of Zulus who had migrated 
towards the north early in Queen Victoria's reign. His army 
mustered 15,000 warriors, commanded by indunas or chiefs, and 
formed into impis or regiments. Raids into Mashonaland were the 
source of trouble with the Company, who, in 1890 and the following 
year, occupied that territory, establishing armed posts or forts, and 
started gold-mining on a large scale, while about 2,000,000 acres of 
land were settled by farmers migrating from Cape Colony and the 
Transvaal. In 1891 the Company, under arrangements with the 
British government, was installed also to the north of the Zambesi, 
the Nyassaland districts becoming the " British Central Africa Pro- 
tectorate," administered by a " Commissioner and Consul-General " 
under the Foreign Office. In June, 1891, treaties made with Portugal 
and Germany added about 350,000 square miles to our territory, 
and "British Central Africa" began to exist. In October, 1893, 
war came with Lo Bengula's people, and after some fighting in which 
breechloaders and Gatling guns prevailed over spears, his capital, 
Bulawayo, was occupied, and Matabeleland was annexed. In 
December, 1895, the cause of personal freedom in Africa was 
advanced by the conquest, after a brilliant campaign under Sir 
Harry Johnston, the Central African Commissioner, of the slave- 
raiding chief Mlozi, of north Nyassa. His capital was taken, and 
he, condemned after trial by native chiefs, was hanged. This event 
made an end of slavery in most of that region. In January, 1896, 
the Protectorate forces severely defeated slave-trading chiefs on the 
western shores of Lake Nyassa, storming their towns, replacing them 
by British forts, and blocking the slave-route to the Zambesi. In 
March of the same year a formidable rebellion in Matabeleland, 
not fully subdued in 1893, occupied British forces for some months 
at and near Bulawayo, the enemy holding strong positions in the 
Matoppo Hills. Some good military work was done under Sir 
Frederick Carrington, and before Christmas the war was ended by 
the submission of the natives throughout Rhodesia. This result 
was followed by the extension of the railway, already stretching from 
47 



714 A History of the World 

Capetown, through Bechuanaland, to Mafeking, as far as Bulawayo, 
the last section of the line being opened in November, 1897, in 
presence of Sir Alfred Milner, the new Governor of Cape Colony 
and High Commissioner for South Africa. Bulawayo, the capital 
of Rhodesia, had by this time become a civilised modern town, with 
the usual public buildings, and protected by a chain of forts in the 
Matoppo Hills. 

" British East Africa " had its rise in the operations of the 
" Imperial British East Africa Company," under a charter of 1888, 
with a vast territory lying between the Galla country to the north 
and German East Africa to the south. Agreements with the Italian 
and German governments and with the Sultan of Zanzibar secured 
the frontier-line, and afforded a coast-line of about 700 miles, with 
ports at Mombasa, Lamu, and elsewhere. In March, 1893, the 
Company retired from the occupation of Uganda, and two years 
later the association became extinct in the sale of all its property, 
assets, and rights to the imperial government. In June, 1895, a 
British Protectorate was proclaimed over the whole of the territory, 
from the coast to Uganda, and in August, 1896, the " British East 
Africa Protectorate " passed under the control of the Foreign Office, 
governed by a Commissioner and a Consul-General, who is also 
British agent at Zanzibar, itself a kind of British protectorate with 
its state-accounts and expenditure subject to the control of that 
official. The "Uganda Protectorate" was established in 1896, with 
borders extended so as to include Unyoro and other territory to the 
east and Usoga to the west. In 1877 English missionaries had 
settled in Uganda, severe persecution being at first endured, with 
the martyrdom, in 1885, at the king's order, of Bishop Hannington, 
the first prelate in that quarter of equatorial Africa. A railway is 
now in progress from the coast at Mombasa to the interior ; the 
territory is governed by a Commissioner under the Foreign Office. 

Natal was first viewed by Europeans when Vasco da Gama, on 
his voyage to India, named the land on Christmas-day, 1497, from 
Dies Natalis, as the anniversary was styled in the Latin of the 
calendar. In 16S3 a British ship was wrecked on the coast near 
Uelagoa Bay, the survivors of the passengers and crew making their 
way overland to the Cape. An attempt was made to colonise the 
territory in 1824, when Chaka, the powerful Zulu king, was in 
possession, but the effort failed amidst native hostility and civil 
warfare between rival chiefs. In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's 
accession, came the beginning of Natal history in the famous 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 715 

" trekking " or emigration of a large body of Boers from Cape 
Colony, under Maritz, Pieter Retief, Pretorius, and other leaders. 
During 1835 and 1836 these people, dissatisfied with the methods of 
government in Cape Colony, which did not allow them a free hand 
in the harsh treatment of natives, passed beyond the Orange River 
to the region between its upper course and the east coast. There 
was trouble with the Zulu chief Dingaan, during which Retief and 
some hundreds of Boers were massacred, but the main body, under 
Pretorius, kept up a determined struggle, and in December, 1838, 
severely defeated the Kaffir enemy. The foundations of Pieter- 
maritzburg and Durban were laid, and the Boers set up a " Republic 
of Port Natal," but the government of Cape Colony promptly opposed 
this movement, and a war ending in 1843 brought the submission of 
some of the Boers, and the passage of others beyond the Drakensberg 
Mountains. In May, 1843, Natal was proclaimed as a British settle- 
ment, and from 1844 until 1856 remained part of Cape Colony. It 
then became a distinct colonial state under a royal charter, with partly 
representative government in a Legislative Council. Many emigrants 
began to arrive from Great Britain, and in 1853 Dr. Colenso, justly 
famous for his chivalrous and truly Christian attitude in maintaining 
native rights, became the first bishop of Natal. In 1854 Durban 
and Pietermaritzburg had municipal government, and the subsequent 
history of the colony has been one of continuous peaceful progress, 
with slight interruptions during the Zulu war already noticed, and 
a rebellious movement in 1873 under Langalibalele, a Kaffir chieftain 
resident as a British subject in Natal. He was captured, tried, and 
sent as a prisoner to the Cape, and the colonists were henceforth 
devoted solely to the successful culture of the sugar-cane, introduced 
in 1856 ; of tea, an industry begun in 1877 with plants brought from 
Assam ; to the breeding of cattle, and to the production of wool and 
hair from large flocks of sheep and goats, many thousands of the 
latter being the valuable "Angoras." In 1893 the colony came 
under " responsible government," and was duly represented by its 
Premier, with the other self-governing colonies, at the second Jubilee- 
celebration of the Queen in June, 1897. Zululand, taken over by 
the British government, in 1887, as a " Protectorate," after the 
dethronement of Cetewayo, his restoration and death in 1884, and 
some warfare between the Boers of the Transvaal and Cetewayo's 
rival, Usibepu, was annexed to Cape Colony in 1897. The republic 
styled the " Orange Free State " was founded by Boers who emigrated 
from Cape Colony in 1836 and following years, and was declared 



7 t 6 A History of the World 

independent in 1854, by peaceful concession of the British govern- 
ment, after the territory had been for some years annexed to our 
dominions as the " Orange River Sovereignty." 

The history of Portuguese dominion in Africa has little of interest 
or importance. Da Gama, on his Indian voyage, called at Sofala, 
Mozambique, Melinde, and other places on the east coast, finding 
them in possession of the Arabs, and in a prosperous condition. 
In 1505 the Portuguese took possession of Sofala, the coast territory 
extending from the Zambesi to Delagoa Bay. In 1507 the fort of 
Mozambique was founded, and some years later the Portuguese 
were at Quiloa, Melinde, and other points. By the year 1520 the 
whole of the east coast from Lourenco Marques to Cape Guardafui 
was under Portuguese dominion or influence, and some poor attempts 
were made to obtain power in the interior. The colonisation of 
Mozambique and adjacent territories was a failure from the first. 
The Jesuits could not convert the natives ; the civilians and soldiers 
could not govern or conquer them. There were frequent wars, with 
varied success, against native chiefs, in the 17th century, the Kaffirs 
making attacks on the south, and the Arabs on the north. There 
was little development of trade or industries, and the expectation of 
obtaining wealth from gold and silver mines was baffled. The 
corrupt rule of luxurious governors completes the picture of incom- 
petence for the development of colonial possessions, and early in 
the 1 8th century the Portuguese, swept by the Sultan of Oman, in 
Arabia, from their possessions, had lost all dominion between Cape 
Guardafui and Cape Delgado. They held but one port on the coast, 
and the chief traffic was the export of slaves. When the " scramble " 
of European Powers for Africa set in, Portuguese jealousy was 
aroused, and the government began to urge shadowy claims based 
upon discovery in early times and supposed " possession." On the 
western coast, Portugal had for centuries been established, in a 
feeble way, in Angola, where the town of St. Paul de Loanda was 
built in 1578. Her territory there was finally restricted, on the 
formation of the Congo Free (or Independent) State, in 1885, to the 
land extending southwards, with a range of about 600 miles inland 
eastwards, from the mouth of the Congo to Cape Frio. In the east 
centre she claimed Mashonaland, but this assumption was set aside 
by the British government, and in 1889 the attempts of Portugal, 
with an armed force, to obtain territory north and south of the 
Zambesi, were frustrated by British action, to the intense indignation 
of people at Lisbon. In the end, her possessions in eastern Africa 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 717 

were confined to the provinces of Mozambique to the north, and 
Lourenco Marques to the south, of the Zambesi. 

We must now deal briefly with African islands. Madagascar, 
the third largest island in the world, about four times the area of 
England and Wales, was known to the early Greek geographers 
Ptolemy and Arrian, and was visited by Arab merchants and Indian 
traders about the 9th century of the Christian era. It is mentioned 
by Marco Polo, but was probably first seen, among Europeans, by 
a Portuguese navigator in 1506. There were Dutch settlements for 
a time on the coast, and the island soon drew attention from the 
French, with efforts, maintained for two centuries, to hold military 
posts on the east coast. In 1840 they occupied the island of Nosibe 
on the north-west. Up to the middle of the 17th century Madagascar 
was under the rule of several independent chiefs. Then a warlike 
people mastered much of the territory, and early in the 19th century 
the Hovas, with British discipline and weapons, conquered nearly 
the whole island. A king named Radama I., in gratitude for 
British aid, abolished the export of slaves, and encouraged the 
advent of English missionaries, who began to work in 1820. The 
language assumed a written form under their labours, and Christianity 
and civilisation were fairly started among the people, estimated at 
about 4,000,000, mainly of Malayo-Polynesian origin, with a large 
capital city, called Antananarivo, containing handsome buildings of 
stone and brick, in the east-central district. The Hovas were the 
most advanced and intelligent of the native tribes, and became, as 
we have seen, the dominant people. The accession of a queen in 
1828 severely checked the rising religion and culture. In 1836 the 
missionaries were driven away, and a great persecution of native 
Christians began, with a general exclusion of Europeans. This 
state of affairs ended in 1861 with the advent to power of King 
Radama II. Madagascar was again open to Europeans, and a new 
era began, in 1868, with the accession of Queen Ranavalona II., 
whose husband was prime-minister. Christianity was embraced by 
them and by many nobles, and in 1869 the burning of the royal 
idols was followed by a general movement in the central provinces 
under which many hundreds of Christian (Protestant) congregations 
and schools arose, while Roman Catholic missions also had much 
success. The island was then on the high road to prosperity and 
civilisation. In 1879 all the African slaves were freed, and judicial 
and legal reforms were afterwards made. A change came during 
the reign of Queen Ranavalona III., who succeeded in 1883. 



71 8 A History of the World 

French colonial ambition had by this time been fully aroused, and 
a new field was sought in Madagascar. A treaty of December, 1885, 
introduced a French " Resident," with control of the country's 
foreign policy, to the capital. In 1890 a French "protectorate" 
over the island was recognised by Great Britain, but not by the 
Malagasy government, and this attitude of the queen and her 
husband, who was also prime-minister, was the cause of invasion 
and conquest. In May, 1895, a powerful expedition was sent to 
enforce the claims of France. Great losses were incurred from 
disease in the coast-region, and much difficulty was found in 
penetrating, with a military force and its modern encumbrances, 
to the interior. In several battles the Hova troops were overcome, 
and on September 30th the capital was taken. A treaty then 
accepted the "protectorate," but this -farcical mask was soon thrown 
aside, and in 1896 Madagascar and its dependencies were declared 
a French colony, with the queen in nominal, and the " Resident 
General " in actual, power, maintained by a French military force. 

Mauritius has much historical interest. Discovered in 1507 by the 
Portuguese navigator Mascarenhas, it was found to be uninhabited, 
and had no sign of any previous occupation. In 1598 the name 
was bestowed by a Dutch admiral, from his flagship, driven there 
in a storm, called the Mauritius after Maurice of Nassau, prince of 
Orange, whom we have seen as a famous " Stadtholder " of the 
United Netherlands. After long further neglect, some settlements 
were made by the Dutch, in 1644, but the island was abandoned in 
1712, to be occupied, three years later, by the French, long in 
possession of the neighbouring lie de Bourbon, now Reunion. 
In 1 72 1, as the " lie de France," Mauritius was given to the French 
East India Company, and passed to the French Crown in 1767. 
During this period the island had been successfully colonised by 
La Bourdonnais, governor from 1735 to 1746, with the foundation 
of the capital, Port Louis ; the clearing of forests ; the making of 
roads, docks, and forts ; and the introduction of the sugar-cane 
which created the chief trade of the beautiful isle. At a later time 
the French government made Mauritius a base of very important 
operations against British trade in the Eastern seas, and the mischief 
was not stayed until the capture of the island, in 1810, by a powerful 
expedition dispatched from India. Under French rule the island 
had steadily risen in value from culture, and had acquired a literary 
interest from the description of its lovely tropical vegetation in 
Saint Pierre's Paul et Virginie, published in 1788. In 1814 the 



British and other European Possessions in Africa 7 1 9 

Treaty of Paris confirmed British possession, with a guarantee to the 
French inhabitants of the continued use of their laws, religion, and 
institutions. The island has, in the course of a century and a half, 
earned the appellation of " Maurice la Malheureuse." Few territories 
so small have ever endured so much havoc from divers strokes 
of calamity. In 1754 it was devastated by a hurricane, and the 
people were decimated by small-pox. In 1773 a terrible cyclone 
drove many ships ashore and half-ruined the buildings at Port Louis. 
In 1 819, 1854, and 1862 many thousands died of Asiatic cholera. 
In 1866-67 an epidemic of malarial fever did more mischief than 
any former outbreak of pestilence, slaying about 21,000 persons, 
or above one-fourth of the city's whole population, at the capital. 
In that dreadful year, 1867, the death-rate for the whole island 
reached in per thousand. In March, 1868, another cyclone wrought 
ravage on the plantations, destroying canes which should have 
produced 60,000 tons of sugar. In April, 1892, one-third of Port 
Louis was destroyed by the worst of all the cyclones, with the loss 
of 1,000 lives, and the ruin of all the houses over 30 acres of the 
best residential quarter. A bad bank-failure, small-pox, and very 
fatal influenza, quickly followed the cyclone; and in July, 1893, 
a fire destroyed, at Port Louis, nearly all that the cyclone had spared, 
reducing to ashes 15 acres of the best shops and other commercial 
buildings. 

We need only notice further that Madeira and the Cape Verd 
Isles were settled by Portugal in 14 19 and about 1460, remaining 
since, save Madeira for a brief period of British occupation, in her 
possession; that the Canary Islands (Canaries), first discovered in 
1334, through a French vessel being driven among them in a storm, 
were finally conquered, from brave natives called Guanches, by 
Spain in 1495 ; that St. Helena, discovered by the Portuguese in 
1502, and held by the Dutch and English in turns until 1693, came 
then into the possession of the East India Company ; that the 
island was the residence of the dethroned Napoleon Bonaparte from 
18 1 5 till 1 82 1, and was transferred to the Crown in 1833 ; and that 
Ascension, discovered by a Portuguese navigator on Ascension-day, 
1501, was first occupied in 1816, as a military and naval post in- 
connection with Napoleon's detention at St. Helena, becoming in 
later years a naval victualling-station, hospital, and coal-depot. 



Section VI. AMERICA; AUSTRALASIA. 



Chapter I. — North America: British Possessions. 

The importance of the great Canadian Dominion and of the United 
States must not be gauged by the amount of space which is devoted 
to their history in this record. That history has been mainly one 
of peaceful progress, happy in presenting few events needing notice 
in a work of this class, which can only be a summary of salient 
points. The flag of France, as the sign of rule, vanished from North 
America, except for a brief tenure, at a later period, of Louisiana, 
on October ioth, 1765, with the surrender of Fort Chartres, on the 
Mississippi, on the conclusion of the war with the Ottawa chief 
Pontiac, who had been incited by the French against the British. 
The whole population of Canada, almost confined to the lower valley 
of the St. Lawrence, did not much exceed 60,000. The French 
Canadians passed from comparative serfdom to freedom, and the 
first printing-press in Canada was introduced in 1764, with the issue 
of the first number of the Quebec Gazette. In 1766 Sir Guy Carleton 
became governor, and ruled for four years with eminent moderation, 
ability, and justice, retaining the old French laws in civil cases, and 
introducing British law and jury-trial in criminal affairs. In 1774 
the Quebec Act made Canada, then consisting only of Quebec 
province, include the country west of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the 
territory from north to south extending between the Hudson Bay 
Company's lands and the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi. 
Religious freedom, without any civil disabilities, was granted to the 
Catholics, mostly French Canadians ; the maintenance of the French 
code of law for civil cases was greatly resented by the small British 
minority. In the same year Carleton returned from England to 
his duties as governor, and helped to defend Quebec during the 

720 



North America : British Possessions 721 

unsuccessful siege, by the revolted American colonists, in the winter 
of 1775-76. The French Canadians remained loyal to the govern- 
ment during the revolt. The Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, deprived 
Canada of the fine country between the Ohio and the Mississippi, 
making the boundary between her territory and the United States 
consist of the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, the 45th parallel of 
north latitude, and a vague line in " the highlands dividing the 
waters falling into the Atlantic from those emptying themselves into 
the St. Lawrence," words which afterwards led to serious boundary- 
disputes. During the American revolutionary war, and after 1783, 
many thousands of British subjects, known as " United Empire 
Loyalists," passed into Canada from the south, and caused the 
creation of the new province styled Upper Canada or Ontario, they 
receiving large grants of land, and money to start them on a new 
career. In 1786, after resigning his post, Sir Guy Carleton, now as 
Lord Dorchester, became Governor-General of British North America, 
and did more good service to the country. In 1791 the Quebec 
Act of 1774 was repealed, and the country was divided, by the 
Constitutional Act, into two provinces, Upper Canada (afterwards 
Ontario), and Lower Canada (afterwards Quebec), the latter retain- 
ing its old feudal land-tenure and the French civil law. In both 
provinces representative institutions, without responsible govern- 
ment, were established, in the Legislative Assembly elected by the 
people, and a Legislative Council nominated by the Crown, with 
a separate governor for each province. Under this form of govern- 
ment Canada existed for the half-century ending in 1841. In 1797 
Lord Dorchester resigned his post, leaving the colony fairly started 
on her career, with two European nationalities living side by 
side. At this time a great preponderance of French Catholics 
existed over the British and Protestants in a population which, 
in 1 791, amounted to about 150,000, of whom six-sevenths were in 
Lower Canada or Quebec province. 

During the war between England and the United States in 
181 2-181 5, both the French and the British colonists, then number- 
ing less than 300,000, defended the country, having a frontier 1,000 
miles in length, with the utmost loyalty and general success, against 
attacks from the south. In October, 18 12, the battle of Queenston 
Heights, near Niagara, on the Canadian side, was won by a small 
British, colonial, and Indian force, the gallant and skilful Sir Isaac 
Brock, governor of Upper Canada, receiving a mortal wound. 
Other victories were won on land in 18 13, but the States vessels 



722 A History of the World 

had much success in conflicts on Lakes Erie and Ontario. In 
1814 the battle of Lundy's Lane, near Niagara Falls, was a vic- 
tory for the British and Canadian forces, but the American com- 
modore Perry, on Lake Erie, gained a decisive victory, Sep- 
tember 10th, 1813 ; and a month later General William H. Har- 
rison completely defeated a force of British and Indians in the 
battle of the Thames. In Lower Canada (Quebec), the Legis- 
lative Assembly, mostly of French members, was at issue with 
the mainly British Executive Council. Under the rule of the 
earl of Dalhousie as Governor-General (1820-1828), a French 
Canadian named Papineau came to the front as the assailant of 
the executive. In Upper Canada discontent was due to the 
monopoly of power, in the Legislative Assembly and in the 
Legislative and Executive Councils, by an oligarchy known as 
the " Family Compact," composed of members of a few families 
descended from the " Loyalists " who had migrated from the 
States, and recruited by the immigration of well-born men from 
the British Isles. In 1824 the elections in Upper Canada, in 
spite of the Family Compact, for the first time gave a majority 
to the reforming party, and a new popular leader and agitator 
arose in William Lyon Mackenzie, a native of Dundee who be- 
came, at Toronto, a very effective journalist, and was returned 
as member of the Assembly in 1828. The cause of the reformers, 
with ebbs and flows of the political tide, made general progress, 
and it was clear that a crisis was approaching. In Lower Can- 
ada the chief desire was not for " responsible government," or 
the control of the executive by the elected bodies, but for 
French supremacy over the British element. In 1830 only 11 
members, or one-eighth of the whole, in the Legislative As- 
sembly, were British, and that body took the bold course of re- 
fusing to vote supplies. Papineau led the way, as Speaker of 
the Assembly, in the French disloyal movement, and French 
Canadians were secretly drilling, while the British party formed 
bodies of volunteers for maintaining the actual state of affairs. 
In 1837, when the British Parliament, by large majorities, re- 
jected the demands for elective Legislative Councils in Canada, 
an appeal to arms was made, and some fighting occurred be- 
tween the insurgents and the British troops, militia, and volun- 
teers in both provinces. Papineau promptly fled to the United 
States ; Dr. Wolfred Nelson, another leader of rebellion, was 
smartly defeated and taken ; Sir John Colborne, the British 



North America : British Possessions 



723 



commander-in-chief, routed a body of rebels at St. Eustache, 
near Montreal, and the movement in Lower Canada ended at 
the close of 1838. In Upper Canada a general feeling of loyalty- 
existed, and only a few extreme men gave trouble, being de- 
feated under the command of Mackenzie, who fled to the United 
States, and organised a contemptible frontier-warfare, aided by 
some American citizens, whose action was disavowed and for- 
bidden by the United States President Van Buren. 

The small Canadian rebellion brought a change of rule, 
founded on the report made by the Earl of Durham, sent from 
England as Governor-General and High Commissioner to in- 
vestigate all causes of discontent. The Canadian Union Act of 
1840 appointed a Legislative Council of members nominated by 
the Crown ; a Legislative Assembly elected by the people ; and 
an Executive Council to hold office, like a ministry, only so long 
as its measures were sanctioned by a majority of the Assembly. 
The provinces were now united, and these and other changes 
gave the people control of all the public revenues, and made 
the judges independent. The new machinery of government 
was well started under the direction, as Governor-General, of 
Mr. Charles Powlett Thompson, a statesman of liberal views, a 
skilled financier, a man of excellent tact and sound judgment. 
Raised to the peerage as Lord Sydenham, he opened the first 
united Parliament of Canada, on June 13th, 1841, at Kingston, 
on the north-east shore of Lake Ontario, and died, all too early, 
in the following September, from the effects of a horse-accident. 
An able ruler came into office in 1847. This was the earl of 
Elgin, whom we have seen in India as Governor-General. Dur- 
ing a term of office extending over nearly eight years, he dealt in a 
masterly way with difficulties arising between the reforming and 
the " old British " parties, the latter of whom, in 1849, promoted 
riots at Montreal, the seat of government since 1844, during 
which the Parliament-house was burned to the ground, with the 
loss of the public records and the splendid library. The colony 
was greatly benefited by the repeal of the Corn-laws, and by the 
Free-trade system. In 1854 the French Canadians in Quebec 
(Lower Canada) were conciliated by the abolition of the seign- 
eurial tenure of land, with its feudal restrictions on tillage, and 
in the same year Lord Elgin concluded the Reciprocity Treaty 
with the United States, giving free trade, for ten years from 
1855, between the countries, and opening the fisheries on both 



724 A History of the World 

sides. In 1858 Ottawa was adopted as the seat of government, 
chosen by the Queen, at the request of both Houses of the Cana- 
dian Legislature, as a place suitable in its geographical position, 
removed from the local jealousies of Upper and Lower Canada. 
The question of a federal union of the Canadian provinces 
now became prominent, and, after much discussion, in Canada 
and in the British Parliament, the matter was settled iri 1867 by 
the passing of the " British North America Act," whereby the 
two Canadas, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick formed one 
Dominion, under the name of " Canada." The Act came into 
force on July 1st, observed as " Dominion Day " in a public 
holiday throughout the whole of the Queen's dominions in 
North America, save only in Newfoundland. In 1870 the new 
province called Manitoba joined the Dominion ; followed, in 
1871, by British Columbia, with Vancouver Island; in 1873 by 
Prince Edward Island ; in 1876 by the North-West Territories; 
and in 1880, under an " Order in Council," by all British prov- 
inces in North America (except Newfoundland) not previously 
included in the Dominion. The new Canadian constitution 
was unique in the history of the British Empire as combining 
federal principles with monarchy. The Covernor-General has 
the aid of a body styled the Queen's Privy Council, acting as 
ministers or heads of departments, and dependent for tenure of 
office on the support of a parliamentary majority. The Gover- 
nor-General represents, and has the power, of the British sover- 
eign. The Parliament consists of two chambers, the Senate 
and the House of Commons. The former is composed of life- 
members nominated by the Crown, all at least 30 years of age, 
removable for misconduct, and representative, in fixed numbers, 
of special districts. The House of Commons is quinquennial in 
term of sitting ; elected under a uniform franchise, except in 
the North-West Territories, consisting of a vote for every adult 
male with a moderate qualification as owner, tenant, or occu- 
pier of houses or land, or as receiver of income from earnings 
or investments, or as son of an owner of real property sufficient 
to qualify two persons, or as a fisherman owning real property 
and fishing-gear together worth £30. Each province has also, 
for local government, its separate parliament and administra- 
tion, as in the several states of the great country beyond the 
Canadian border. The history of the Dominion, under succes- 
sive able governor-generals, including Lord Monck, Lord Duf- 



North America : British Possessions 



'25 



ferin, and the Marquis of Lome, has been one of peace, with 
the slight exceptions of some Fenian raids from the United 
States in 1866, and troubles in the North-West Territories to 
be shortly noticed. A few eloquent figures show the progress 
of the Dominion. In 1841 the population of Upper and Lower 
Canada was estimated at about 1,100,000. In 185 1 the two 
provinces had nearly 2,000,000. In 1861 the number exceeded 
2,500,000; and in 1871 the Dominion, as then constituted (the 
Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia), reached nearly 
3,500,000. In 1898 the population of the whole Dominion, with 
its eight provinces, certainly exceeded 5,250,000 ; the total im- 
ports and exports, of nearly equal value, were worth about 
^£45,000,000 sterling ; and the people, as a ship-owning com- 
munity, came fourth in the world, next to Great Britain, the 
United States, and Norway, with vessels of nearly 1,000,000 
tons, including 1,800 steamers of 250,000 tons. The canals 
and railways, including the magnificent Canadian Pacific Rail- 
way, show some marvels of engineering. The loyalty of this 
great self-governing nation to the British Crown has been too 
often and too recently displayed to need comment here. 

The North-Western Territories of the Dominion include 
regions, extending up to the Arctic Ocean, explored during the 
19th century, under the auspices of the British government and 
of the Hudson Bay Company, by Franklin, Back, Richardson, 
Rae, and other enterprising men. The historical events con- 
nected with the vast territory may be briefly noted. In 1885 a 
rebellion occurred among the half-breeds, dissatisfied with new 
arrangements made concerning their lands in 1882. They were 
headed by Louis Riel, the former leader of the Red River re- 
bellion, and some successes were gained over the North-West 
Mounted Police and some volunteer troops. A large body of 
Canadian militia then took the field, under the command of 
Major-General Middleton, an officer who had done good service 
in New Zealand and during the Sepoy war in India. A difficult 
campaign ended in the discomfiture of the rebels, with the sur- 
render of Riel, who was hanged after a vain appeal to the Judi- 
cial Committee of the Privy Council in England. The" latest 
event in the North-West was the discovery of gold in the Klon- 
dike district on the Yukon river, with an auriferous region as 
large as France. The first gold was found there in August, 
1896, and a " rush " took place in the following year. 



726 A History of the World 

The province of Manitoba, formerly known as "Red River 
Settlement," was a part of the vast region once called " Rupert's 
Land," so named from the Cavalier prince who helped to found 
the Hudson Bay Company. In 17S3 a rival to that company 
arose in Montreal as the North-West Fur Company, and the 
competition and hostility reached their height early in the 19th 
century, when an enterprising and benevolent Scottish noble, 
the earl of Selkirk, governor of the Hudson Bay Company, 
planted settlements of Highlanders near the Red River. These 
people were attacked, in 1814 and subsequent years, by the 
forces of the North-West Company, and driven off with blood- 
shed from their lands. Lord Selkirk took measures to restore 
their position, with ultimate success, and after many failures 
due to the climate and other natural causes, the colony was 
finally established with the help of new emigrants from Scot- 
land, Germany, and Switzerland. The two great fur-companies 
were united in 1821 ; in 1859 the trade was thrown open; in 
1869 the company ceded its territorial claims for the sum of 
^300,000, retaining its "forts" or trading-posts; and in 1870, 
as we have seen, Manitoba became a province of the Dominion. 
It was this event which caused the " Red River rebellion " 
amongst settlers in fear for their titles to lands, Fenians, Amer- 
icans desiring annexation to the United States, and other po- 
litical and religious elements. Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, was 
seized by the insurgents, and the leader, Louis Riel, a French 
half-breed born in Manitoba, declared, in February, 1870, the 
establishment of a "provisional government," with the issue of 
a " Bill of Rights " demanding local self-government, represen- 
tation in the Dominion legislature, and amnesty for the leaders 
of revolt. A force of 1,200 British troops and Canadian militia 
was dispatched under the command of Colonel (now Lord) Wol- 
seley, and, after a difficult and arduous march of 400 miles, 
reached the scene of intended operations and found that Riel 
and his associates had fled. He was outlawed, and, when elected 
to the Dominion House of Commons by a Manitoban constitu- 
ency in 1874, was not permitted to take his seat. His subse- 
quent fate has been recorded. 

The history of British Columbia begins at the close of the 
18th century. Vancouver Island, discovered in 1592 by a Greek 
navigator in the Spanish service in Mexico, was coasted by 
Drake, and styled " New Albion," in Elizabeth's days, and was 



North America : British Possessions 727 

again visited by Captain Cook in 1778. The territory had its 
modern name from Captain George Vancouver, of the royal 
navy, who had sailed as midshipman under Cook, and was 
engaged in the exploration of that part of the Pacific coast of 
North America. In 1849 tne island became a Crown colony. 
A few years later the discovery of gold in the valley of the 
Fraser River, on the opposite mainland, brought a rush of emi- 
grants, and in 1858 British Columbia became a separate Crown 
colony. In 1866 the two were united, joining the Dominion, as 
"British Columbia," in 1871. 

Newfoundland, discovered in 1497 by one of the Cabots, and 
visited by the Portuguese navigator Cortereal in 1501, soon be- 
came the centre of a great cod-fishery carried on by people from 
Portugal, Spain, France, and the British Isles. In 1583 it was 
occupied as a British possession, under a charter from Eliza- 
beth, by the famous Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose ship sud- 
denly foundered on a return voyage. In 1624 the island was 
first regularly colonised by Sir George Calvert, afterwards Lord 
Baltimore, under a " patent " from James I. In 1662 the French 
appeared at Placentia on the south coast, and claimed posses- 
sion of the district for their country, an event which was to 
become, in later years, a source of much trouble to colonial and 
British ministers. During the 18th century true colonisation, 
or tillage, was greatly retarded by the opposition of the "fish- 
ing-interest," who cared for nothing but cod, and the colonists 
were subject to many attacks during the wars with France. In 
1763 the Treaty of Paris conceded the islands of St. Pierre and 
Miquelon to France, and in 1783 the Treaty of Versailles ex- 
tended the French hold on the coast. The cod-fishery has gen- 
erally flourished, but the progress of the colony has been slow, 
mainly from obstinate devotion to the one pursuit, and neglect 
to develop the internal resources of the great island, rich in 
minerals, and suitable for tillage in large areas. The people 
have hitherto refused to join the Dominion In 1895 there was 
a severe financial crisis due to a fall, in Europe, of the price of 
products from the fisheries. The capital, St. John's, has suf- 
fered from disastrous fires, as in 1816, 1817, and in 1846, in 
which year two-thirds of the place was destroyed. In 1892 one- 
half of the buildings, including the fine unfinished Anglican 
cathedral and other great structures, were swept away by a 
conflagration which left 11,000 people homeless. 



y 2 g A History of the World 

Chapter II. — United States (1783-1898). 
(Revised by the American Editor.) 

The United States, the great Republic of the West, is the 
most marvellous instance in the world's history of the mainly 
peaceful development of a mighty nation from revolted colo- 
nies. The original 13 States, forming a territory that was a 
mere strip of the Atlantic coast, have now become 45 States, 
one District (Columbia, the seat of government, containing 
Washington), and 5 " Territories," with a total area exceeding 
3,500,000 square miles, and a population, in 1898, fairly estimated 
at 70,000,000. This magnificent result is due to free institu- 
tions and a vast territory of fertile soil, both encouraging the 
advent of immigrants from Europe ; to the possession of great 
mineral wealth ; and to the energy, enterprise, and ingenuity 
of a people who, at first mainly of British stock, have blended 
therewith other elements, and developed a new type of character 
and civilisation. One of their greatest modern speakers, Chaun- 
cey M. Depew, delivering the Columbian oration at Chicago in 
October, 1892, dwelt with legitimate pride on the marvellous 
progress and widespread influence of his country, declaring that 
" the constitution and government had now passed the period 
of experiment, after a hundred years of successful trial, and 
their demonstrated permanency and power were revolutionising 
the governments of the world. England of the Mayflower and 
of James II., of George III. and of Lord North, had enlarged 
her suffrage, and was to-day animated and governed by the 
democratic spirit. Anarchists and Socialists had taken no root, 
and made no converts, on American soil. Religion had flour- 
ished, and a living and practical Christianity was the character- 
istic of the people." The glorious flag of the stars and stripes 
began to wave (long may it float, the symbol of freedom, in the 
free breezes of heaven!) on June 14th, 1777, by vote of Con- 
gress; it was recognised as the flag of anew independent nation 
on September 3rd, 1783, by the Treaty of Versailles concluded 
between Great Britain, the United States, France and Spain. 
Four years later, after long deliberation at Philadelphia, the 
existing well-known constitution was signed, and it came "into 
operation in April, 1789, with George Washington as the first 
President, and John Adams as Vice-President. After two terms 



United States (1783-1898) 729 

of office, the chief founder of the country's independence 
declined to serve for a third period, and retired into private life 
with the high esteem of the best men throughout the civilised 
world, leaving his country established on a firm basis of credit, 
with a foreign policy which kept the new republic free from Euro- 
pean alliances. A great trade was carried on with Great Britain, 
the United States importing manufactured goods, and export- 
ing raw cotton for British mills, at a price made lower by the 
ingenious invention, in 1793, of the " cotton-gin " for separating 
the fibre from the seed. This improvement, substituting the 
easy and rapid work of a machine for a slow and toilsome 
process of hand-labour, was a great event in the history of the 
country, due to Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts. In 
1800, during the term of the very honest and energetic John 
Adams, the seat of government was transferred from New York 
to Washington. Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee had be- 
come States of the Union under Washington's presidency. 
Under Thomas Jefferson (two terms, 1801-1809) Ohio was 
admitted in the usual way, and the area of the original " United 
States " was more than doubled by the purchase from France of 
Louisiana, including a vague vast territory to the north and 
west of the present State. 

The war with Great Britain, from 1812 till 1815, was waged 
under the presidency of James Madison, in power for two terms 
(1809-1817). The ill-feeling which caused this grievous contest 
between kindred nations was a matter of long growth. In 1806 
and 1807, as we have seen, British "Orders in Council" were 
aimed at the trading under neutral flags which had replaced the 
direct French and Spanish colonial traffic with Europe, when the 
British cruisers had swept that trade from the seas. The 
United States had thereby gained, as a neutral nation, a large 
and profitable carrying-trade between European countries at 
war with Great Britain and the colonies of those Powers. The 
effect of the "Orders" on the commerce of the United States 
was serious, and her people were greatly and justly irritated by 
the searching of American vessels for sailors of British nation- 
ality who might be deserters from the navy, or liable to service 
under the prevailing system of " impressment " by which the 
British fleet was manned. In 1809 the government passed a 
" non-importation " Act as regarded British goods, and made 

preparations for war. The chief events of the struggle are well 
48 



730 A History of the World 

known : the capture of several British frigates by American 
vessels of the same nominal class; the victory of the British 
Shannon over the Chesapeake in June, 1813 ; the attacks made on 
the American seaboard, with serious damage to the United 
States navy, in Maine and Louisiana; the capture of Washing- 
ton, after fighting with American militia, by British veterans 
fresh from the Peninsular War, and the vandalism displayed by 
the victors in burning the Capitol and other buildings; the 
failure of an expedition against Baltimore; the disastrous fail- 
ure of an attack on New Orleans, with the loss of 2,000 brave 
men under General Pakenham, himself mortally wounded. It 
is lamentable to remember that, a fortnight before this useless 
sacrifice of life, peace had been concluded, in Europe, by the 
Treaty of Ghent. There was no Atlantic cable to flash the 
welcome news. Though the rights of neutrals and the right 
of search were not mentioned in the treaty, the United States 
gained everything they had fought for. Every practice of 
which they complained was discontinued at once and forever; 
and the military posts on the western frontier, which the British 
still held in violation of the treaty of 1783, they now relin- 
quished. American trade had been ruined for a long period 
in the capture of most of her mercantile marine, the insol- 
vency of most of her commercial class of citizens, and the 
reduction of her export-trade to one-twelfth of its former 
amount. On the whole, the war increased the reputation of 
the United States for power and public spirit in defence of her 
coasts against greatly superior military and naval force. The 
country was raised in the estimation of the world, and peace 
soon brought revived prosperity for an energetic people. 

Before dealing with the internal history, it is well to note 
the relations between Great Britain and the United States from 
1815 until the present day. For over 80 years there has been 
no further armed conflict, but negotiation or arbitration has 
settled every dispute. If some high officials — perhaps desiring 
to conciliate the " Irish vote," or, in other words, the political 
support of some millions of citizens who have, in their own 
persons, or for the sake of their ancestors, ample reason for 
hostility to Great Britain on account of past misery due to mis- 
rule and " landlordism " — have, from time to time, indulged in 
the amusement described, in picturesque slang, as "twisting the 
British lion's tail," the British public and press, or a large sec- 



United States (i 783-1 898) 731 

tion of them, have, on their side, been guilty of an arrogant 
demeanour, and of contemptuous allusions, largely due to mis- 
conception, to American feelings, tastes, and institutions. In 
every serious position of affairs the best part of the societies 
most fairly representing constitutional monarchy and republi- 
canism have displayed a good feeling which yearly renders less 
likely any disturbance of peace. In August, 1842, there was a 
dispute concerning the boundary between Canada and the 
State of Maine. The treaty concluded by Lord Ashburton 
made a fair and friendly settlement of this difficulty, conceding 
a larger part of the disputed territory to the United States, and 
obtaining a better frontier for Canada. In 1843 a satisfactory 
settlement was made regarding the action of British cruisers in 
searching, for slaves, vessels bearing the American flag. Con- 
gress agreed that the honour of that flag "demanded that it 
should not be used by others to cover an iniquitous traffic," 
and the British government undertook to pay compensation for 
damage or delay if really American ships were interfered with 
when the captains of English cruisers demanded production of 
a ship's papers in proof of nationality. In 1846 the Oregon 
Treaty, concerning a great territory on the Pacific coast, settled 
a difficulty of long standing as to the boundary between the 
United States and the territory now known as British Columbia. 
Some strong language had been used both by the American 
President (Polk) and Sir Robert Peel, the British premier, but 
the matter ended, as usual, in a compromise. In 1856, during 
the Crimean War, the American government dismissed not only 
some of our consuls, but Mr. Crampton, the British minister at 
Washington, on the ground that they had been aware of viola- 
tions of the law of the United States by British agents recruit- 
ing there for the contest in Russia. The British prime-minister, 
Lord Palmerston, did himself honour by making an apology to 
the United States government, and putting an end to the work 
of the enlisting agents, as soon as he found that there had been 
an actual infringement of American law. In i860 the British 
sovereign and people were gratified by the warm welcome ac- 
corded in some of the great cities of America to the Prince of 
Wales, travelling as a private gentleman, in charge of the Colo- 
nial Secretary, the Duke of Newcastle. The eminent jurist and 
statesman, Mr. Charles Sumner, remarked to the duke that " he 
was carrying home to Great Britain an unwritten treaty of 



-- 2 A History of the World 

amity and alliance between two great nations," and President 
Buchanan and the Queen exchanged letters couched in the most 
friendly terms. 

The amicable feeling thus represented was soon to be put 
to very severe tests. In an early stage of the civil war in the 
United States, the Federal cruiser San Jacinto stopped the 
British mail-steamer Trent, in the Bahama Channel, by firing a 
shot across her bows, and sent on board an armed party, who 
carried off Mr. Slidell and Mr. Mason, envoys of the Confederate 
States to Europe. This act, the Trent being a neutral vessel, 
was a flagrant breach of international law, and the utmost in- 
dignation was aroused in Great Britain. Captain Wilkes, the 
commander of the San Jacinto, was commended by the Federal 
Secretary of the Navy, and thanked by a vote of Congress, but 
President Lincoln, and Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, on 
the demand of Lord Palmerston, surrendered the prisoners on 
January ist, 1862, within a few weeks of their capture. In his 
formal reply to Palmerston, Secretary Seward discussed the 
whole question, showing that such detention of a vessel was 
justified by the laws of war, and there were many British prece- 
dents for it; that Captain Wilkes conducted the search in a 
proper manner; that the commissioners were contraband of 
war, and the commander of the Trent knew they were contra- 
band when he took them as passengers. But as Wilkes had 
failed to complete the transaction in a legal manner by bringing 
the Trent into port for adjudication in a prize court, it must be 
repudiated. In summing up, Secretary Seward said: " We are 
asked to do to the British nation just what we have always 
insisted all nations ought to do to us." Thus a war was 
prevented which might have changed the course of history by 
entailing the disruption of the American Union, and sowing the 
seeds of undying enmity between Great Britain and the progres- 
sive and powerful Northern States. In those States much bitter 
feeling was aroused by the moral support, couched in no mod- 
erate terms, accorded in Great Britain to the Confederates by 
the " upper classes," or "society," as represented by the Times, 
the Saturday Review, and other leading papers. Facts compelled 
the British government to recognise the Confederate States 
as "belligerents," instead of mere "rebels," but the ministry 
declined the proposition of Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the 
French, that England should join with him in recognising the 



United States (1783-1898) 733 

Southern (Confederate) States as a government and a nation. 
The representatives of British democracy, and some of the ablest 
politicians, believed in and hoped for the success of the Federals 
in the mighty struggle. 

We need not dwell at any length on the case of the Alabama, 
Florida, and three other Confederate privateers, constructed in 
British- yards, and allowed to escape to sea, not through any 
guilty connivance on the part of British officials, but through 
faulty delay to arrest and detain them under the provisions of the 
Foreign Enlistment Act. The Alabama was foremost, among 
those vessels, in preying upon Federal commerce, until her 
career was ended, in June, 1864, by her sinking, outside Cher- 
bourg, after an hour's fight with the Federal cruiser Kearsarge. 
She had destroyed Federal property worth ^£1,000,000 sterling, 
in addition to the pecuniary harm done to American (Northern) 
merchants and shipowners through the needful payment of 
heavy insurance for "war-risks," and through the loss of 
freights transferred by shippers to neutral flags. When the 
Federal cause triumphed, British ministers, for some years, 
declined to recognise American claims for compensation in 
regard to mischief done by the Alabama and her consorts, but 
in 187 1, when Mr. Gladstone was prime-minister, the Treaty of 
Washington caused those claims to be submitted to arbitration 
at Geneva, before a tribunal of five gentlemen appointed by the 
Queen, the President of the United States, the King of Italy, 
the Swiss President, and the Emperor of Brazil. In June, 1872, 
the court awarded to the United States the sum of about 
^3,250,000 sterling in payment of compensation for all losses 
to American commerce. But it made an offset of one third of 
this amount by allowing a counter-claim on account of American 
fishing in Canadian waters. The sum received by the United 
States fell far short of the damage that had been inflicted on 
their commerce; but the American Government and people 
received the award without a murmur, and thus another trouble- 
some international question was peacefully settled. 

In 1893 the Behring Sea Arbitration, conducted before a 
tribunal sitting in Paris, settled matters in dispute between 
Great Britain and the United States concerning the seal-fishery 
in the waters of the coasts of north-western America and north- 
eastern Asia. The British counsel, Sir Charles Russell, Attor- 
ney-General in Mr. Gladstone's fourth and last ministry, an 



7^4 A History of the World 

advocate of the highest rank who became Lord Russell, Chief- 
Justice of England, dwelt in eloquent terms on the " weighty 
moral significance " of that submission to arbitration on the 
part of two great Powers, " one a representative of the civili- 
sation of the Old World, great in its extent of dominion, greater 
still in its long-enduring traditions of well-ordered liberty, and 
in the stability of its institutions ; the other a young but stal- 
wart member of the family of nations, great also in its extent 
of territory, in the almost boundless resources at its command ; 
great too in the genius and enterprise of its people, and pos- 
sessing enormous potentialities for good in the future of the 
human race." These noble words were happily followed, in the 
interests of peace on earth and goodwill amongst men, by a de- 
cision which, to quote the writer's own words in another work, 
" saved the honour, and satisfied the wishes, of all reasonable 
men in the two great kindred nations who had again set the 
world a noble example of self-restraint and sound judgment in 
seeking wiser and better modes of settling disputes than a re- 
sort to the always violent and cruel, and often unjust, arbitra- 
ment of battle." 

The name of James Monroe, a man of distinguished pru- 
dence, honesty, and patriotism, who was President for two terms 
(1817-1825), in a period of general progress and prosperity, at 
once suggests the famous " Monroe Doctrine," so much referred 
to, so little understood. In December, 1823, this President, in 
his annual " message to Congress," declared that " the Ameri- 
can continents [/. e. including South America, much of whose 
territory had recently become free from the domination of 
Spain], by the free and independent position which they have 
assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered 
as subjects for future colonisation by any European Power," 
and that the-extension of the system of the " Holy Alliance " 
to America would not be viewed " in any other light than as the 
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United 
States." The "Holy Alliance" was a league formed by the 
sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, after the fall of Na- 
poleon, and formally announced in the manifesto dated from 
St. Petersburg, on Christmas-day, 1815, by Alexander I. This 
remarkable document stated that the three monarchs bound 
themselves to govern their own peoples, and to deal with for- 
eign states, by " taking for their sole guide the precepts of the 



United States (1783-1898) 735 

holy religion of our Saviour, namely, the precepts of justice, 
Christian charity, and peace." The Duke of Wellington, when 
he was asked to sign this as the representative of Great Britain, 
dryly remarked that the English Parliament would require 
something more precise. All the European sovereigns, except 
the Pope, became members of the league, which was, in spite of 
its pious declaration, a conspiracy against constitutional free- 
dom, a scheme for maintaining absolutism, and for repressing 
aspirations for liberty and reform. Its true spirit was clearly 
shown in 182 1 when the above-named sovereigns, assembled at 
Laibach, in Carniola, to regulate the affairs of Italy, sent a dis- 
patch to their ministers at foreign courts, proclaiming the doc- 
trine that " useful or necessary changes in legislation, and in 
the administration of states, ought only to emanate from those 
whom God has rendered responsible for power." Despotic rule 
thus declared open war against constitutional government. 
The monarchs of Austria and Prussia had already denied to 
their own subjects the representative government which they 
had once promised. The autocrat of Russia was aiding them 
in the suppression of freedom throughout Italy. Under George 
Canning's control as Foreign' Secretary, the influence of Great 
Britain was flung into the scale against these " Holy Alliance " 
principles, and the cause of freedom was supported in the case 
of Spain and Portugal, and in that of the Spanish colonies in 
South America. The " Monroe Doctrine " was, in fact, no 
"doctrine " at all, but a protest against any application of the 
detestable principles of the " Holy Alliance " in the way of in- 
tervention, by despotic European Powers, in the struggle for 
freedom made by the Spanish colonies in South America. Dur- 
ing his terms of office Mississippi and Illinois were admitted, in 
1817 and 1818, as the 20th and 21st States of the Union, and in 
1819 a treaty with Spain caused the cession of Florida. In the 
same year and 1820 Alabama and Maine became the 22nd and 
23rd States, the population of the country being then over 
9,500,000. In 182 1 Missouri joined the Union as a slave-state, 
after the " Missouri compromise " had settled that henceforth 
slavery was prohibited in the United States to the west of the 
Mississippi, and north of 36^° north latitude, the southern bound- 
ary of the new State. The country continued to prosper under 
President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), son of the second 
President, the first railroad being made, the Erie canal com- 



736 A History of the World 

pleted, and the debt greatly diminished, with a good surplus 
over expenditure. 

It was under Andrew Jackson, President for two terms 
(1829-1837), that the pernicious system of "rotation in office" 
was established, by which officials in every department of the 
civil service were removed to make room for political support- 
ers of the new President. In 1830 the population had reached 
nearly 13,000,000. In the following year the slavery-question, 
destined to assume so vast an importance, came prominently 
forward when the famous William Lloyd Garrison established 
in Boston the newspaper styled the Liberator, advocating the 
immediate and unconditional freeing of the negroes. Though 
the abolitionists who followed Garrison refused to take any 
part in politics, their constant denunciations created much irri- 
tation in the Southern States, where slave-labour was made 
highly profitable in the cultivation of cotton, sugar, and tobacco. 
In 1836 and 1837 Arkansas and Michigan became the 25th and 
26th States of the Union. We pass quickly over political con- 
flicts concerning tariffs and "protective" duties on imports, and 
a great financial crisis, due to over-speculation in land and other 
causes, with a temporary check to the country's prosperity, dur- 
ing the presidency of Martin Van Buren (1837-1841), and the 
rise of the Mormon sect, during the term of John Tyler (1841- 
1845), noting also the admission of Florida, in 1845, as the 27th 
State, and the annexation, in the same year, after revolt from 
Mexico, of the great territory called Texas. This event was 
followed by the admission of Texas and Iowa, in 1845 and 1846, 
as the 28th and 29th States. 

James K. Polk was President from 1845 to 1849, and during 
this period we have the only instance of increase of territory 
for the United States by a war of conquest. In 1846-47 a con- 
test was carried on with Mexico, in which the United States 
troops took the field under Generals Zachary Taylor, Kearney, 
and Winfield Scott. Some brilliant victories were first due to 
the army under Taylor, invading Mexico from the north. In 
May, 1846, he won the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca. In 
September he took Monterey, and in February, 1847, he gained 
over the Mexican general, Santa Anna, the great victory of 
Buena Vista. In 1846 Kearney and other leaders subdued New 
Mexico and California. In the spring of 1847 Scott landed with 
an army near Vera Cruz, and received the surrender of that city 



United States (i 783-1 898) j^7 

on March 29th. Advancing then on Mexico, the capital, he de- 
feated Santa Anna at Cerro Gordo in April ; at Churubusco, in 
August ; and, after storming strong positions before the capital, 
he entered the city on September 14th, and planted the "stars 
and stripes " over the palace of the Montezumas. In February, 
1848, the war ended with a treaty by which Mexico gave up all 
claim to Texas, with the Rio Grande as boundary, and ceded 
the provinces of New Mexico and Upper California, or over 
500,000 square miles, receiving a payment of $15,000,000 or 
about ^3,000,000 sterling. This great accession of territory 
carried the United States border westwards to the Pacific. In 
1848 Wisconsin became the 30th State, and the same year saw a 
remarkable event in the discovery of gold in California, by a 
workman digging in the valley of the Sacramento. A " rush " 
to the scene of potential wealth at once set in from all parts of 
the States and from Europe. The track across the prairie was 
strewn with the bones of men and animals that perished on the 
way. A great and promiscuous population swarmed in the new 
gold-fields. In San Francisco " vigilance committees " dealt out 
lynch-law to rogues and ruffians who preyed on honest citizens. 
That city, from a mere log-village, soon grew into a large and 
flourishing town, and California, in 1850, became the 31st State. 
General Taylor, the hero of the Mexican war, died soon after 
his entry on office as President in 1849, and was succeeded, as 
provided in such cases, by the Vice-President, Millard Fillmore. 
Under his administration, the subject of slavery caused much 
agitation, and violent debates occurred in Congress. At this 
time, when the peace of the country was imperilled, the eloquent 
speeches of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were of great serv- 
ice in effecting a compromise between the anti-slavery party, 
including the " Free-soilers " (advocates of freedom for negroes 
in all fresh States) who had arisen in 1848, and those who upheld 
what was delicately styled the "domestic institution." Califor- 
nia was admitted as a free State. Utah and New Mexico were 
organised as " Territories " without any mention of slavery ; and 
in 1850 the important Fugitive Slave Law conciliated the slave- 
party by providing for the surrender, to their owners, of negroes 
who had escaped to any free State. The Northern people were 
greatly irritated by this, and constant evasions of the law oc- 
curred. Under President Franklin Pierce (1853— 1857) the slav- 
ery-question was still the main subject before the country. In 



738 A History of the World 

1854, when the " Territories " of Nebraska and Kansas were or- 
ganised, the Missouri compromise (which forbade slavery north 
of latitude 36 30') was abrogated, and the question of slavery 
was left to the decision of the inhabitants. The abrogation of 
the compromise was looked upon by a majority of the Northern 
people as an act of bad faith, and as indicating a determinedly 
aggressive purpose on the part of the slave-holders. The result 
was the immediate formation of a powerful party distinctly op- 
posed to the extension of slavery. Both sections rushed settlers 
into Kansas, and bloody conflicts ensued. 

Matters ripened fast for civil war under the presidency, from 
1857 to 1861, of James Buchanan, a Democrat. In the former 
year the Supreme Court, in the famous Dred-Scott case — in 
which a negro of that name and his wife claimed their freedom 
on the ground that their master had taken them for a time into 
Illinois, a " free " State, and had thereby emancipated them — 
gave a decision that, under the constitution, no negro-slave nor 
his or her descendant, slave or free, could become a citizen of 
the United States ; and also that a slave did not become free 
by being carried into a territory where slavery was prohibited 
under the " Missouri compromise " of 1821, an arrangement 
which the Court held to be " unconstitutional." The aboli- 
tionists were enraged by a judgment which appeared to them 
to make slavery a national instead of a merely local institution ; 
the slave-owners, on their side, exulted in the declaration that 
they could, in any State, retain their hold on their property in 
human beings. In 1858 and 1859 Minnesota and Oregon be- 
came the 32nd and 33rd States. In the latter year came the 
famous incident of " John Brown's Raid " at Harper's Ferry, in 
Virginia. A Kansas anti-slavery man, known as " Captain John 
Brown," a brave, simple, fanatical soul, had planned an attack 
on slavery by the formation, in the Virginia mountains, of a 
stronghold for escaped negroes. Defying man's law in behalf 
of what he held to be the sacred right of freedom for all human 
beings, Brown, with only a score of men, seized the government- 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry, in order to provide means of defence 
for fugitives and revolted slaves. His generous project could 
not but fail against the government-forces, and a desperate 
fight ended in his capture and hanging as a traitor. This hero 
long lived in the memories of the haters of slavery. A stirring 
song was written and set to music, and, at the close of the civil 



United States (1783-1898) 739 

war, the streets of Charleston, metropolis of South Carolina, 
rang with its strains as a victorious regiment of freed negroes 
made their entry, singing "John Brown's body lies mouldering 
in the grave, but his soul is marching on." We may here note, 
on the eve of a momentous struggle, that in i860 the popula- 
tion of the United States was nearly 31,500,000. 

John Caldwell Calhoun, a native of South Carolina, after 
success as a lawyer, entered Congress in 181 1 as representative 
of that State, and soon gained a prominent position. He was 
Secretary of War in Monroe's cabinet, and served as Vice- 
President with Adams and Jackson. He next became distin- 
guished as inventor and upholder of the theory that any State 
can set aside laws which it holds to be unconstitutional, his 
aim being chiefly at tariff-laws which might benefit one part of 
the country and be detrimental to the interests of another. 
This remarkable man seriously held slavery to be a blessing to 
all parties concerned in it. 

These two doctrines — State sovereignty and the rightfulness 
of slavery — were held by a majority of the white people of 
the Southern States ; and this fact, together with their belief 
that they must stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of the 
" peculiar institution," as it was called, and the further fact that, 
as they had no manufactures, it was for their interest to have a 
low tariff, caused the South to be politically " solid " many 
years before the civil war. Not only could no votes be cast 
there for any candidate who was opposed to slavery, but the 
question could not even be discussed. The threat of disunion, 
which had been made many times, was carried into effect in 
1861. In the presidential election of i860 Abraham Lincoln, 
the candidate of the Republican party — which was opposed to 
the extension of slavery, but did not propose to interfere with 
it where it already existed — received the electoral votes of all 
the Northern States except half of those of New Jersey, though 
in all of them a large part of the popular vote was against him. 
The Southern States were solidly opposed to him, both in the 
electoral and in the popular vote. Although the Congress 
chosen at the same time was politically opposed to him, his 
election was made the pretext for revolt, on the ground that 
the interests of the South were in danger. South Carolina 
adopted an ordinance of secession in December, i860. Six 
other cotton States followed rapidly, and in February, 1861, a 



740 A History of the World 

provisional government for " The Confederate States of Amer- 
ica " was formed at Montgomery, Ala., with Jefferson Davis as 
President. Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee joined the Con- 
federacy a little later. Of the other slave States, Kentucky re- 
fused to secede and attempted to take a position of neutrality • 
Maryland and Missouri were kept in the Union after a short 
struggle, and Delaware remained loyal from the first. The 
Northern people were slow to believe that the secessionists 
were in earnest ; but when they became convinced of it they 
showed a determination to crush the rebellion at whatever cost, 
for they saw that division of the country would involve two 
large standing armies, with constant danger of renewed con- 
flict.* The Southerners believed that their forces, led by of- 
ficers trained at West Point Military Academy, and actuated by 
feelings of the strongest patriotism, would win an easy triumph 
over what they called "mercenary" troops from the Northern 
States, and they also looked for help to Great Britain and 
France when the manufacturers of those countries should find 
their mills running short of raw cotton from the blockade of 
Southern ports. The Northerners, at the outset, believed that 
their foes would soon collapse from inferiority of numbers and 
from revolts among the slave-population, at that time amount- 
ing to 4,000,000. Both sides were deceived. The Northerners 
or Federals put forth their whole strength, and produced gen- 
erals of great ability. France and Great Britain remained 
neutral. The Southerners fought ably, bravely, and with the 
utmost pertinacity, maintaining the struggle to the point of 
utter exhaustion, and not seriously troubled by their negroes. 

The chief commanders of the Federal armies were McClellan, 
Burnside, Hooker, Meade, Rosecrans, Sheridan, Sherman, and 
Grant; on the Confederate side, the most conspicuous leaders 
were Beauregard, the two Johnstons, " Stonewall " Jackson, 
Stuart, Longstreet, the two Hills, Hood, and Lee. The first 
blow was struck on April 12th, i86i,when the "rebels," as they 
were styled in the North, fired on the Federal garrison at Fort 
Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbour; the last was de- 
livered in April, 1865, in North Carolina, compelling Joseph 
Johnston to make his surrender to Sherman. The chief events, 

* The statement of the causes of the war, not clearly understood by 
the F^nglish author, has been rewritten for the American edition. — Ameri- 
can Ed. 



United States (1783-1898) 741 

in 1861, were the defeat of the Federal troops at Bull Run or 
Manassas, in Virginia, near Washington, a rout which showed 
the Northern government how serious a task lay before it, and 
caused the voting by Congress of $500,000,000 and 500,000 
men. Confederate cruisers began to assail Federal commerce, 
and the Southern ports were blockaded by Northern vessels, 
causing European traders to engage adventurous mariners for 
the long profitable game of "running the blockade" in swift 
steamers freighted with supplies, for which the Southerners paid 
high prices, loading the ships in return with cotton. In 1862 
the Federals strove to capture Richmond, the enemy's capital, 
but McClellan, through the brilliant work of Joseph Johnston, 
Jackson, and General Lee, now appointed to the command of the 
chief Confederate army, and Stuart, the dashing leader of the 
Southern horse, was forced to retire from the peninsula. The 
same year brought great success to the Federals in other quar- 
ters. In February, Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennes- 
see and Cumberland rivers, were taken by the combined action 
of troops under General Grant and gunboats under Commodore 
Foote. In April, at the battle of Shiloh, on the Tennessee, 
Beauregard was defeated and Albert Sidney Johnston was 
killed. In striving to open the Mississippi the Federals captured 
Island No. 10, and then Forts Pillow and Memphis, farther down 
the great river, were taken. In April, Captain (afterwards Admi- 
ral) Farragut, a man remarkable for combined skill and daring, 
moving up the Mississippi, passed the Confederate batteries 
with success, destroyed the flotilla, and captured New Orleans, 
where vast quantities of cotton were burned as soon as the 
Federal vessels hove in sight. Forts and harbours on the coast 
were occupied, and the end of 1862 saw every place of impor- 
tance on the Atlantic seaboard, except Charleston, Wilmington, 
and Savannah, held by Northern troops. 

On March 8th, 1862, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a strong 
Federal fleet of wooden vessels was assailed by a single Con- 
federate ship — the Merrimac, a frigate cut down, and having 
her deck roofed in with heavy timber covered with railway-iron. 
She thus resembled the roof of a barn with a huge chimney 
and with heavy guns protruding from holes in the roof-side. 
She steamed coolly into the midst of the enemy. Their heavy 
shot rolled like peas off her sides, while her shells made a 
slaughter-house of the Federal frigate Congress, setting her on 



ja.2 A History of the World 

fire and driving her ashore, where the crew were glad to sur- 
render. The Merrimac, fitted with a strong steel bow, then 
" rammed " the Cumberland sloop-of-war, causing her to sink in 
a few minutes, with her guns still firing, the flag still flying, 
and all her crew on board. Three other Federal ships ran 
aground, and the vessel which had wrought this havoc then 
steamed off with the tide to her moorings near Norfolk. Such 
was the fight between the last ships of the old wooden navy and 
the first ironclad. This event, causing vast delight to the Con- 
federates, was surprising enough, but there was more to come. 
On the next day there appeared in Hampton Roads, just arrived 
from a Northern shipyard, a little ship called the Monitor, des- 
tined to give her name to all her class. She was only 900 tons, 
and looked like " a cheese-box on a raft," being a hull with a 
deck only a few inches above the water, bearing a circular tower 
in the centre, capable of being moved round by steam, and so 
of directing to any point the fire of two heavy guns. The part 
of the hull exposed to shot was formed of massive oaken beams 
covered with six-inch iron plates on the sides, and with two 
inches on the deck. Her inventor was John Ericsson, a Swed- 
ish engineer, a citizen of New York The Monitor, on March 
9th, encountered the Merrimac, of 5,000 tons, and after a fight 
of two hours, in which she herself suffered no injury, drove her 
off with severe loss to the crew from a shell entering a port- 
hole. The Federals, at once constructing copies of the Monitor, 
had the command of the sea, and effectually blockaded the 
Southern ports, reducing the Confederates to great straits. 
Ironclads of another pattern were quickly built for use inland, 
and brought success to the Federal arms on the Mississippi in 
operations conducted hundreds of miles from the sea-coast, giv- 
ing the Northerners command of the river as a movable base of 
operations; depriving the Confederates of supplies of men and 
provisions from the western States; and raising food in the 
South to famine prices. It was the fleet of Farragut that 
enabled Grant to cross the Mississippi with safety, get into the 
rear of Vicksburg, and ensure the downfall of that great strong- 
hold. At the close of 1862 there was more fierce fighting in Vir- 
ginia, with general success to the Confederates ; but at Antietam, 
Md., in September, Lee was signally defeated by McClellan. 

In 1863 the Federals began operations with 700,000 men in 
the field, and the year opened with President Lincoln's procla- 






United States (1783-1898) 743 

mation of freedom to all slaves in all States or parts of States 
in rebellion, a measure followed by the enrolment, training, and 
arming of over 50,000 black troops against the Confederates 
before the close of the year. In May the Southern cause suf- 
fered a great loss in the death of the famous" Stonewall " 
Jackson, one of the finest seconds-in-command ever seen. He 
was accidentally shot by his own men at the close of the first, 
day of Chancellorsville, west of Fredericksburg, where Lee 
next day, May 3rd, utterly defeated the Federals under Hooker. 
In July, General Lee, at the head of the finest army yet sent 
into the field by the South, having invaded Pennsylvania, was 
defeated by Meade, after three days of hard fighting, in the 
decisive battle of Gettysburg, a turning-point in the struggle, 
securing the Federal territory from all future attack, and re- 
ducing the Confederates, after severe loss, to a defensive posi- 
tion. On July 4th Vicksburg fell ; in the autumn the Federal 
victory of Chattanooga, won by Grant over Bragg, cleared 
Tennessee, and opened the way to the heart of the Confederacy. 
In 1864 Grant took the field as commander-in-chief of all 
the Federal armies, and a settled plan of operations began. In 
May and June, in battles involving terrible loss, continued for 
days, in the "Wilderness," a region of thick forest, and at Spott- 
sylvania and other points, Grant vainly assailed Lee, and then 
crossed the James river. In August he was able to inflict a 
most serious blow by seizing the Weldon railroad, running 
southwards from Richmond to the Carolinas, thus cutting off 
the capital from direct access to resources in the south. Lee's 
desperate efforts could not recover this vital line of communica- 
tion. In the same year the able Sherman won victories in 
Georgia over the Confederate leaders Joseph Johnston and 
Hood, and his capture of Atlanta deprived the enemy of a 
town which was at once a granary, a workshop, a storehouse, 
and an arsenal. There and at neighboring places, factories, 
mills and foundries were lost, the sources which supplied wag- 
gons, harness, clothing, cannon, powder, and shot for all the 
Confederate forces. It was clear that the end of the long and 
terrible struggle was drawing near. On the seaboard, Farra- 
gut, in August, took Mobile, in Alabama, closing another 
harbor to the "blockade-runners"; and in the following winter 
the capture of Fort Fisher, in North Carolina, sealed up Wil- 
mington, the only port of entry for supplies left to the Con- 



744 A History of the World 

federates. They were by this time reduced to paying ^10 per 
pound for coffee ; to a condition in which sugar, butter, and 
white bread were beyond the reach of all except the wealthy. 
At the close of the year the helpless position of the Southern 
cause was demonstrated in Sherman's famous " March to the 
Sea." Starting from Atlanta on November 16th, 1864, that 
general, heading 60,000 men, made his way to the coast at 
Savannah by a march of 300 miles, occupying five weeks, dur- 
ing which the railways had been broken up, the country laid 
waste, and the whole region proved to be destitute of all human 
beings save women, children, and old or disabled men. 

At the opening of 1865, Sheridan, commanding 10,000 splen- 
did cavalry, joined Grant before Petersburg. Lee's retreat 
from Virginia was cut off in all directions, and Sherman, mov- 
ing up from the south, captured Charleston, Columbia, a»d 
Raleigh, in the Carolinas. On April 2nd and 3d Grant and 
Sheridan made a general attack along the whole line of Lee's 
front, breaking through the intrenchments, taking thousands of 
prisoners, and finally capturing Petersburg -and Richmond. 
From first to last, in the Army of the Potomac, about 750,000 
men had been employed in the Virginian campaigns by the 
Federals. The whole history of war has no such record. On 
April 9th, 1865, the gallant Lee, hurrying westwards with a few 
thousand men, the sole remains of his splendid force, was 
hemmed in and compelled to surrender, at Appomattox Court- 
house. Grant accorded the most generous treatment to the 
conquered, and it may be stated, in general, that no civil war 
ever ended in a way so honorable to the victors for the clem- 
ency shown to the vanquished. The Confederate president, 
Jefferson Davis, was captured in Georgia, imprisoned for a 
time, and then released. The colossal contest had caused the 
death, in battle, or by disease, or as the effect of wounds, of 
about 300,000 able-bodied men on each side. The national 
debt had risen to the enormous sum of nearly $4,000,000,000, 
or nearly ^800,000,000 sterling. 

The exultant joy of the Federals was turned into mourning 
by the assassination, on April 14th, 1865, of the excellent Presi- 
dent Lincoln, recently elected for a second term. This abom- 
inable crime was due to a fanatic, an obscure actor, who shot 
his victim as he sat in his box, with his wife and friends, at a 
theatre in Washington. The Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, 



United States (i 783-1 898) 745 

lying ill at home, was attacked at the same time, and seriously 
but not fatally wounded. The assassin was pursued and killed 
by the troops, and certain accomplices were hanged or im- 
prisoned. Evidence showed a plot against all the leading 
members of the government; there was no trace whatever of 
any connivance on the part of the late Confederate leaders. 
The dead statesman left behind him the stainless memory of a 
true patriot, ranking second only to Washington in the history 
of the Union. He had risen, like some other Presidents, from 
a lowly position as a manual labourer to the highest post in 
his country's service, and will live forever in the remembrance 
and high regard of his countrymen. We note that, by an 
amendment to the constitution, slavery within the United 
States had been prohibited in the previous December. The 
burden of power was taken up by the Vice-President, Andrew 
Johnson, until 1869, and the great work of reconstructing the 
Union began. In May an amnesty was granted, with certain 
exceptions, to former " secessionists " who now took the oath 
of allegiance to the United States. In June another " amend- 
ment " gave the freedmen, the former slaves, the right of 
citizenship. West Virginia (the loyal portion of that State) 
had become the 35th State of the Union in 1863, and Nevada, 
in the following year, was admitted as the 36th. 

In July, 1866, the first serviceable Atlantic cable, laid by 
the Great Eastern, established telegraphic connection with 
Europe, a fact of immense importance mainly due to the skill 
and energy of Mr. Cyrus W. Field, a man of Massachusetts 
who had for years devoted himself to the work of " mooring 
the New World alongside the Old." Congress well awarded 
him, on complete and final success after a failure in 1858, a 
gold medal and the thanks of the nation, an honour followed 
by his receipt of the "Grand Medal" at the Paris Exhibition 
in 1867. In that year Nebraska entered the Union as the 37th 
State, and the territory was largely augmented by the pur- 
chase of Alaska, in the north-west of the continent, from 
Russia, for the sum of over $7,000,000, or nearly ^1,500,000 
sterling, the area of the region being nearly 600,000 square 
miles. The seceded States were, by degrees, readmitted to 
the Union under a "Reconstruction Act" of 1867, on condi- 
tion that delegates of " the male citizens ... of whatever 
race, colour, or previous condition," should frame a constitu- 
49 



746 A History of the World 

tion, to be ratified by the people and approved by Congress. 
In 1869 the victorious general, Ulysses S. Grant, a Republi- 
can, became President, and he was re-elected for a second 
term in 1872. In the first year of his administration another 
amendment to the national constitution provided that " the 
right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of 
race, colour, or previous condition of servitude." This enactment 
was afterwards the cause of much trouble at elections in the 
Southern States, where the whites were naturally jealous of negro 
equality in political affairs. In 1869 also the two oceans were 
joined, and San Francisco was brought within a week's journey 
of New York, by the opening of the Pacific Railway. In 1870 
the population of the Union was found to exceed 38,500,000. 
The Southern States were rapidly recovering from the disasters 
and devastation of the civil war. In 187 1, as we have seen, 
the Treaty of Washington peacefully ended, through arbitra- 
tion, the great dispute with Great Britain concerning the 
"Alabama claims," and in the same year the greatest fire of 
modern times destroyed a large portion of the great city of 
Chicago, clearing 3,000 acres of ground, and rendering 100,000 
persons homeless. In 1876 the Centennial Exhibition at Phila- 
delphia commemorated the signing of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence at that great city, the celebration taking place in 
the friendly presence, and with the hearty greetings, of British 
commissioners. The President from 1877 to 1881 was Ruther- 
ford B. Hayes; the census of 1880 gave an astonishing proof 
of progress in a population found to exceed 50,000,000. The 
President who came into office in March, 1881, was James A. 
Garfield, a man descended from one of the Puritans who emi- 
grated to Massachusetts in early Stuart days, and son of the 
daughter of a Huguenot family which settled in New England 
in 1685. Like Lincoln, this man of truly noble ancestry passed 
by sheer merit from a lonely log-cabin to the White House at 
Washington, a grand proof of what is open to energy, ability, 
and high character in the world's greatest republic. Toiler 
with his hands; tutor; preacher; lawyer; commander of a regi- 
ment of Ohio volunteers on the outbreak of the civil war; 
brigadier-general for success in driving the Confederates out 
of Kentucky; major-general for gallantry at the great battle 
of Chickamauga in September, 1863; member of Congress, 
where he won distinction on military and financial questions; 



United States (1783-1898) 747 

leader of the republican party in the House; Senator of the 
United States: these were the successive steps in the instructive 
and interesting career which was ended in September, 1881, 
from the effects of a revolver-shot fired in the previous July by 
a disappointed office-seeker. The dying President, during his 
many weeks of lingering, was regarded with the deepest anxiety 
and sympathy throughout the world. The Vice-President, 
Chester A. Arthur, held office as President for the remainder of 
the term. Garfield had, on assuming office, taken up the im- 
portant cause of civil service reform, thereby alienating a 
powerful section of his own party. Under President Arthur, 
in 1S83, the Civil Service Act introduced the principle of com- 
pulsory competitive examination. 

The later history of the United States includes the election, 
as Presidents, of Grover Cleveland (1885-1889), Benjamin Harri- 
son (1889-1893), of Mr. Cleveland again (1893-1897) ; and, lastly, 
of William McKinley, the famous author of the Tariff bill, for 
greater protection against foreign goods. The war between the 
United States and Spain which arose in April, 1898, was mainly 
due to the intense horror and disgust caused by the existence of 
cruelty and anarchy in Cuba, arising from inveterate and incur- 
able misrule. In this matter, long, real, and terrible provocation 
had been endured by the United States. Her people had seen a 
kind of mediaeval rule in Cuba, displaying one of the most hide- 
ous disgraces of the 19th century. During the first five years 
of one revolt the Spaniards admitted that they shot 43,500 pris- 
oners. In that rebellion, lasting from 1868 to 1878, under the 
sanguinary rule of a governor named Valmaceda, 80,000 men 
died fighting, and during the struggle of the years from 1895 
to 1898 more than 100,000 had perished. For fifty years the 
United States had been compelled to watch the coast of Florida 
in order to prevent " filibustering." In February, 1 896, a " policy 
of reconcentration " was adopted by the Spanish power in Cuba. 
This consisted in forcing the agricultural population into the 
towns and destroying their homes and their crops, in order to 
deprive the Cuban insurgents of their sources of supply. The 
necessary result was frightful suffering and mortality among 
the reconcentrados, while the efficiency of the insurgent bands 
was not diminished. In one year, according to Spanish official 
estimates, the deaths numbered 150,000, and in another year 
100,000 more. The Red Cross society undertook a work of re- 



-_j.8 A History of the World. 

lief, and American citizens contributed hundreds of thousands 
of dollars in cash and many tons of supplies; but the task ap- 
peared hopeless, as the reconcentrados, when fed one day, were 
quite as helpless the next, their houses, crops, and implements 
having been destroyed. The feeling of the American people 
that forbearance had ceased to be a virtue and the time for ac- 
tive interference had arrived, was increased by the destruction 
of the United States battle-ship Maine, which was quietly riding 
at anchor in the harbour of Havana, in the night of February 
15th, 1898. With the ship, perished 266 officers and men, most 
of whom were asleep in their hammocks. It was believed that 
this fiendish work was done by a submarine mine fired by some 
Spaniard. Preparations for war were begun in January of that 
year, in March Congress voted $50,000,000 for national defence, 
the coast fortifications were strengthened, and the army and 
navy were increased. After doing what he could to avert or 
delay hostilities with Spain, the President (April nth) set forth 
the facts in a special message, and referred the whole matter to 
Congress. That body, on April 19th, passed a joint resolution 
demanding that Spain at once relinquish all authority in Cuba, 
leaving that island free and independent, and authorizing the 
President to use whatever force might be necessary to compel 
her to do so. It disclaimed any intention on the part of the 
United States to acquire the island. In the four-months' war 
that followed, the important operations were at Manila, in the 
Philippine Islands, and at Santiago, the second city of Cuba. At 
the former place a United States fleet under Commodore George 
Dewey boldly sailed into the harbour on May 1st, attacked the 
Spanish fleet, and completely destroyed it, and also silenced 
the battery that tried to protect it. Dewey did not lose a ves- 
sel or a man. In this remarkable battle, one of the most per- 
fect victories known to history, Dewey, who had learned his 
art during the civil war in his own country, being a lieutenant 
under Farragut, followed the example set by Commodore Du 
Pont when he captured the forts at Hilton Head, S. C, in 1861. 
The Spanish fleet was drawn up in line, stationary, with its 
left protected by the land batteries. Dewey's fleet, led by 
the flag-ship, sailed past the Spaniards, delivering a rapid and 
accurate fire, and then returned, firing from the other broad- 
side, sailing thus five times in a long ellipse. Santiago was 
made the seat of operations because another Spanish fleet had 



Mexico 



749 



taken refuge in its harbour and was blockaded there by one 
under Admiral William T. Sampson. As the entrance to this 
harbour was long, narrow, and completely mined, a strong 
military force was landed east of the city, under Gen. William 
R. Shafter, and by rapid approaches, with battles at Baiquiri, 
El Caney, and on the heights overlooking the city, this 
army soon put the place' into a state of siege. The Spanish 
fleet then steamed out of the harbour (July 3rd), and by mov- 
ing rapidly westward attempted to escape. The blockading 
fleet pursued swiftly and relentlessly, and in a running fight of 
60 miles destroyed or drove ashore every Spanish vessel, losing 
but one man killed in the encounter. The surrender of the 
city, with all the Spanish troops in eastern Cuba, soon followed. 
An expedition was then sent to Porto Rico, and took possession 
of that island, and additional land forces (one expedition sailed 
in June) embarked at San Francisco for the Philippines. In 
August the Spanish Government, through the French minister, 
sued for peace, and hostilities were discontinued. A commis- 
sion to arrange the details of a treaty of peace, consisting of 
five Americans and five Spaniards, convened in Paris. The 
protocol required that Spain should withdraw from Cuba and 
cede Porto Rico to the United States, but left the fate of the 
Philippines undetermined. 

Chapter III. — Mexico; West Indies; Central and South 

America. 

In 1823, after a rebellion against Spanish tyranny begun in 
1810 under the leadership of a priest, and long guerilla-warfare, 
Mexico was established as a republic. For more than half a 
century the chronic state of anarchy and civil war was such 
that, in the 53 years between 1823 and 1S76, there were 52 
presidents or dictators, one emperor, and a regency, the change 
of rule being nearly always attended by violence, and a large 
number of the men dispossessed of power being ultimately exe- 
cuted by their opponents. The loss of Texas and of other ter- 
ritory has been recorded. Great confusion prevailed from the 
fall of Santa Anna, the President, in 1855, down to 1867, in- 
cluding civil war, beginning in 1858, between President Benito 
Juarez, an honest and able man of Indian parentage, and Gen- 
eral Miramon, leader of the clerical or reactionary party. In 
January, 1861, after being forced to retire to Vera Cruz, Juarez 



750 A History of the World 

was able to occupy the capital, and then came the intervention of 
some European Powers on behalf of foreigners resident in the country, 
and of foreign bondholders whose payments of interest had been 
repudiated by the government. In December, 1861, troops from 
Great Britain, France, and Spain occupied Vera Cruz. In April, 
1862, the withdrawal of British and Spanish ships and soldiers left 
the French in possession, and then Louis Napoleon declared war 
against Juarez, and undertook the conquest of the country. In the 
course of this foolish and unprincipled enterprise the French forces, 
after some severe defeats, stormed the strong defences of Puebla, 
and in June, 1863, entered the city of Mexico. Puebla had been 
defended with the utmost tenacity and courage, during a siege of 
62 days, by the Mexican general Ortega, who won thereby great 
honour for his country. The people did not welcome the French 
invaders, and Louis Napoleon committed one of the worst, as well 
as most foolish, acts of his career when he set up an empire under 
Maximilian, an Austrian archduke, a man of high abilities and 
culture, but devoid of any claim to the position which he assumed. 
He found himself at war with a large part of his subjects, and his 
throne rested only on French bayonets. In 1867, when the con- 
clusion of the great civil war enabled the United States to pay heed 
to the flagrant violation, by the French emperor, of the accepted 
Monroe ideas concerning foreign intervention in American affairs, 
the French army was withdrawn. The helpless Maximilian was 
taken prisoner and shot, after trial by court-martial, and Juarez 
resumed rule as a four-years President, being practically possessed 
of dictatorial power. In 187 1 he was re-elected for the same period, 
but died suddenly in 1872. Then came more revolution and civil 
war, but the hapless country enjoyed peace at last, after so many 
troubles, when Porfirio Diaz, one of the ablest men that ever held 
sway in Mexico, became President in 1876. A new era of progress 
and prosperity began. Railways and other public works, trade, 
and education, made conspicuous progress, and the people, recog- 
nising the worth of their new ruler, have repeatedly re-elected Diaz 
to the position which, in 1898, as President for the fourth term, he 
still holds to the great advantage of the country. 

The West Indies, meaning the groups of islands so-called, were 
discovered and colonised, chiefly by Spaniards at the outset, in the 
age of Columbus or in the 16th century. The original inhabitants, 
named Caribs, a race of American Indians, were soon, to a large 
extent, exterminated by Spanish cruelty, and their place, as forced 






West Indies 751 

labourers on the sugar-plantations, was taken by negroes, first 
imported from Africa in 1505. In the 16th and 17th centuries the 
British, French, and Dutch began to dispute possession with the 
Spaniards, and in the 17th, 18th, and early in the 19th centuries 
much warfare between European Powers took place in that region, 
ending in the present tenure of different large islands and groups. 
A detailed history would include an account of the lawless deeds, on 
the " Spanish Main," or the Caribbean Sea, its islands and coasts, of 
the adventurers known as " buccaneers," who, from the earlier part 
of the 16th century to the end of the 17th, made war on the Spanish 
monopoly of trade. These men, deadly foes of Spaniards, displayed 
in their actions courage, cruelty, and warlike skill to a high degree, 
under leaders of various European nations, among whom the most 
famous were the terrible Frenchmen Montbars and Peter of Dieppe, 
and the Welshman Henry Morgan, a man of great ability and valour, 
who was knighted by Charles II. of England and became deputy- 
governor of Jamaica. These buccaneers, whose confederacy was at 
one time more than a match for Spanish naval power in those 
waters, were succeeded by mere pirates, common villains and 
desperadoes of every race, preying upon all honest traders ; making 
crews " walk the plank " on capture ; hunted down themselves, as 
noxious beasts, by men-of-war, and often justly ending their career 
by the noose, their bodies being hung in chains at Kingston and 
other West Indian ports. 

Dealing first with the larger islands, we need make no further 
mention of Cuba, settled by the Spaniards in 151 1, than to state the 
facts that Havana, in 1762, was taken by a British expedition ; that, 
during the ten months of our occupation, the port, open to free 
trade, was entered by more than 1,000 ships, about an hundred-fold 
more than the previous annual average ; that the place was restored 
to Spain in 1763 ; that the island, opened to the world's commerce 
in 1 818, was for some years in a most flourishing condition; and 
that, after a gleam of renewed prosperity during the American civil 
war of 1861-65, Spanish misrule has made Cuba what it remains in 
the spring of 1898. 

Haiti (Hayti), formerly called Hispaniola, and also Santo 
Domingo, the next island in size to Cuba, discovered by Columbus 
in 1492, was peopled first by the aboriginal Caribs, and then by 
negro-slaves under the Spanish masters who had swept the Caribs 
away. French buccaneers obtained a firm footing in the west of the 
island, and this portion was ceded to France in 1697. The new 



752 A History of the World 

possessors imported great numbers of negroes for tillage, and a large 
class of mulattoes came into existence, as an intermediate caste 
between the French colonists and the negroes, being personally free 
but without political rights. The French Revolution of 1789 caused 
an outbreak in French Haiti two years later, and internecine warfare 
occurred for some years among the three classes, the leader of the 
negroes being the famous black, Toussaint, who received the surname 
of " l'Ouverture " for his courage in opening a way, in battle, into 
the enemy's serried ranks. The Spaniards, in eastern Haiti, were 
assailed by him, and his success won from the French the rank of 
" general of division " in 1797, with the subsequent chief command 
of the " army of San Domingo," as the island was then called. 
This negro genius, before the close of the century, cleared the whole 
island of the Spaniards, restored order and prosperity, and then 
began to aim at independence. In 1802 Bonaparte ordered the 
resumption of slavery, and Toussaint's refusal brought an expedition 
which compelled surrender, followed by his removal as a prisoner to 
France, where, through treachery in his arrest, and cruelty in his 
treatment, which are a disgrace to Napoleon, he soon met his death 
as the inmate of a damp, dark cell in a fortress near Besancon. In 
1803 events in Europe caused the French ruler to withdraw his 
forces from the island, and in 1804 a negro from the Guinea coast, 
who had become a slave of a French planter, and was Toussaint's 
chief supporter in the revolt, having assumed his former master's 
name, Jean Jacques Dessalines, proclaimed himself " emperor of 
Haiti," with a revival of the old name. The career of "Jean 
Jacques I.," a man remarkable in the war for activity, courage, and 
ferocious cruelty, was cut short, after a display of debauchery and 
despotism, by death in action against rebels in 1806. His conqueror 
and slayer, a slave from Grenada who bore the name of Henri 
Christophe, a man of enormous size, and of remarkable energy and 
courage, had played a great part in the rising under Toussaint, and, 
after a period of civil war, he became "king of Haiti" in 181 1, 
and ruled with a strong hand and some success until 1820, when a 
revolt caused by his own cruelty and greed, and the desertion of 
his body-guard and " nobles," drove him to a suicidal end. The 
island had by this time gone far on the road to ruin under the 
control of emancipated slaves unfit to rule and unwilling to work. 
Capital had ceased to exist ; political affairs became a chaos, as the 
country passed, sometimes as one state, sometimes as two, from one 
form of government to another. Under President Boyer, a mulatto 



West Indies 753 

educated in France, who had shared in overthrowing Dessalines, and 
displayed both wisdom and courage in his career, Haiti enjoyed 
tranquillity from 1820 to 1843, purchasing from France, in 1825, 
recognition of independence as a republican state by the payment 
of a large sum in compensation to the former planters. A negro 
insurrection, due to jealousy of mulatto supremacy, drove Boyer to 
Jamaica in 1843. 1° that year the eastern (Spanish) part of the 
island became, as it remains, the Republic of Santo Domingo, after 
being under Spanish rule from 1861 to 1863, then independent again 
by revolt, and now, after many troubles of revolution, fairly quiet 
and prosperous under a "constitution" of 1865. In 1849 the 
western (French) part of Haiti became an " empire " under the negro 
general Soulouque. In 1859 the republic was revived, and has 
since remained, under various changes of constitution, and revolutions 
usually driving presidents from office before the completion of their 
terms. This portion of the island shows the negro, in power, 
relapsed into his original barbarism, with a nominal Christianity that 
has become, in a large degree, serpent-worship involving actual 
cannibalism, and with the forms of civilised rule masking the worst 
political corruption and injustice. Puerto Rico, or Porto Rico, has 
been under Spanish rule, as a miniature Cuba, since 15 10. 

Jamaica, taken from Spain by the British in 1655, was almost 
ruined for many years after 1833 through the emancipation of negroes 
too lazy to work for wages, and the equalisation, in 1846, of the duties 
on slave and free-grown sugar, rendering the planters unable to 
compete with those of Brazil. This statement applies to all the 
British West India islands dependent on the sugar-industry, and of 
late years the foreign European " bounty " system for producers of 
beet-sugar has wrought much mischief. The most notable event in 
Jamaica's recent history was the serious negro-revolt of 1865, sup- 
pressed and punished with great severity by Governor Eyre, who 
was recalled. The representative system of government was then 
abolished, and the island became a " Crown colony," under a form 
of rule now modified in the direction of constitutional government, 
with electors having a property-qualification. The country has of 
late years greatly revived through the cultivation of other products 
than the sugar-cane, and the construction of new necessary public 
works. The Bermudas (or Bermuda), colonised by Sir George 
Somers in 1609, have remained in British possession, becoming of 
late a valuable naval station and fortress in a commanding position 
between Canada and the West Indies proper. Barbados, settled 



754 A History of the World 

by British people in 1625, has never changed hands, being always 
prosperous save for occasional hurricanes, the scourge of the West 
Indies, and for a negro-rising in 18 18 which did much damage. 
Emancipation was not hurtful there, because the dense "population 
of negroes, having no spare lands to " squat " upon, were forced to 
work for wages or starve. The Bahamas, on one of which, as we have 
seen, Columbus landed in 1492, were stripped of a large aboriginal 
population through one of the worst displays of Spanish cruelty and 
wickedness in the West Indies. The natives were taken away to 
San Domingo, to the number of about 50,000, by kidnapping, and 
there worked to death on the plantations. The islands were first 
colonised from the Bermudas, but remained, for a long period, the 
resort of buccaneers and pirates. By the close of the 18th century, 
under the Peace of Versailles (1783), they became finally a British 
possession, and are now prospering in the cultivation of pine apples 
and a species of hemp. During the American civil war Nassau, the 
capital, on New Providence island, was a favourite resort of the 
foreign "blockade-runners " before making their final effort to reach 
Southern ports. Trinidad, discovered by Columbus in 1498, was 
in Spanish possession from 1532 until conquest by Great Britain in 
1797, troops under Sir Ralph Abercrombie having a large share in 
the capture. Colonel Picton, afterwards the famous Peninsular and 
Waterloo warrior, was the first governor, exercising a firm and 
beneficial rule until J 803. The large French element in the island 
is due to the immigration, in the Spaniards' days, by permission of 
their government, of a large number of settlers, towards the end of 
the 1 8th century, from the French West Indies, under the auspices 
of a planter named M. de St. Laurent, who had noted the great 
fertility of the soil. Partly ruined by slave-emancipation, Trinidad 
has been saved by the importation of coolie-labour from the East 
Indies and by the cultivation of cocoa in place of sugar as the sole 
staple of trade. The remaining West India islands, British, French, 
and other, need no notice here. 

In Central America, British Honduras was first settled from 
Jamaica, by cutters of mahogany and logwood, about 1665, and 
remained for over a century a dependency of our chief West Indian 
island. The little colony was always subject to Spanish attacks, and 
in 1779-81 Nelson, with a man-of-war, was engaged in guarding the 
coast. In 1798 a large Spanish fleet was repulsed off Belize harbour, 
and the territory was then British by right of conquest, becoming 
an independent colony in 1884. The rest of the narrow land 



South America 755 

between North and South America is occupied by five republics — 
Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica — all 
being territories once belonging to Spain ; all in revolt from her 
tyrannous misrule, and acquiring independence, early in the 19th 
century; all more or less subject, for a long period, to revolutions 
and wars with each other ; all now in a fair state of progress towards 
a prosperous condition. 

South America is almost wholly composed of republican states 
which won their independence of their former European rulers, 
Spain and Portugal, in the early part of the 19th century. The 
freedom of Colombia (formerly " New Granada "), Ecuador, Vene- 
zuela, and Bolivia is closely associated with the deeds of Simon 
Bolivar, the greatest man in modern South American history, a 
hero whose name stands high on the glorious roll of the champions 
of liberty. He was a native of Caracas, in Venezuela, in which 
country he took the field in 181 1, and after a long struggle there 
and in New Granada, he became President of the Republic of 
Colombia (Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada combined) in 182 1. 
He fought against Spanish tyranny in Ecuador and Peru, and when 
the latter country gained her independence in 1825, Upper Peru 
became a new state named Bolivia in his honour. These countries 
have been subject to many troubles, including revolutions, civil war, 
and struggles with each other, but they never became again subject 
to Spain. The three states forming the original Colombia separated 
in 1 83 1, the present Republic of Colombia representing the former 
New Granada. Ecuador has passed through a series of revolutions 
making her history a long anarchy and insurrection wearisome to 
trace and profitless to follow. Venezuela has had a like disastrous 
experience 'of party-struggles, including sanguinary civil wars, the 
last of which broke out in 1892 and reduced the country to an 
anarchical condition for a time. In 1898 a dispute with Great 
Britain concerning the boundaries of British Guiana was in course 
of settlement by arbitration. Bolivia has also suffered much from 
revolutions, and, after a war into which, in alliance with Peru, she 
entered against Chili in 1879, the country was deprived of her sea- 
board territory, with its stores of nitre, and became subject to pay 
a heavy indemnity. 

Peru, in her contest for freedom from Spain, was greatly aided 
by the illustrious British seaman Lord Cochrane (earl of Dundonald). 
The decisive land-battle of Ayacucho, fought on December 9th, T824, 
ended in the capture of the Spanish viceroy and all his officers, and 



756 A History of the World 

then the new republic plunged into a career of civil war and revolu- 
tions, war with Bolivia, and other troubles, ending for a time, 
in 1844, with the election of the brave, iron-souled Ramon Castilla 
as President. For ten years the country was at peace; then came 
further revolution, and, in 1862, Castilla's final retirement from 
office. The financial condition of affairs was deplorable, and no 
efforts of Manuel Pardo, the best of modern Peruvian rulers, could 
restore the credit of the state. In 1879 arose the war with Chili, 
which state coveted the nitrate-beds on the coast, and disaster 
occurred by sea and land. One of the two Peruvian ironclads was 
wrecked ; the other, under the heroic Admiral Grau, was captured 
in October, 1879, after a desperate fight against the two Chilian 
ironclads, of newer construction and more thickly armoured. The 
loss of the Huascar, the famous Peruvian vessel, was attended by the 
death of Grau and nearly all his officers. Victories on land brought 
the Chilians into Lima, the capital, and a spirit of vandalism was 
shown in the demolition of public works, the laying waste of private 
estates along the coast, and the destruction at Lima of the valuable 
public library. In the interior, General Caceres maintained a firm 
resistance to the invaders, but his efforts were made useless by the 
submission of other leaders, and before the Chilians left the country 
in 1884 Peru had to submit to terms involving the loss of her 
nitrate-province, Tarapaca. In June, 1886, the brave Caceres was 
elected President, and under him and his successors the country has 
been slowly recovering from the effects of past misfortunes. 

The Argentine . Republic, formerly known as the " United 
Provinces of the River de la Plata," came into existence, in its 
present form, in 1853 and i860. The country was colonised by 
the Spaniards in 1535, when Buenos Ayres was founded, and it 
was for a long period regarded as a part of Peru. After ages of 
misrule from Madrid, and of sanguinary warfare with the natives, 
a new vice-royalty was established in 1776, with Buenos Ayres as 
the capital. In 1806 a British expedition occupied the town, but 
our forces, under General Beresford, were soon there besieged and 
forced to surrender to superior numbers. In 1807 an assault on 
Buenos Ayres by British forces utterly failed through the disgraceful 
incompetence of General Whitelock, afterwards "cashiered" by 
sentence of a court-martial, and this expedition ended in the with- 
drawal of all our troops from that part of South America. There 
can be little doubt that these successes over a formidable foe 
inspired the colonists in their resolve to be free from Spain, then 



South America 757 

being attacked by Napoleon. In 1810 they revolted, founding a 
"provisional government," and so plunged into a war for indepen- 
dence which did not end in their favour until 1824. For half a 
century the country passed through the usual series of South 
American revolutions, varied by war, in alliance with Brazil, against 
Paraguay, from 1865 to 1870. For 20 years peace prevailed, but 
the credit of the country suffered from a military revolt in 1890. 
Under a generally stable system of rule, and a very liberal policy 
towards agricultural immigrants, the republic has lately made more 
rapid progress than any other on the South American continent. 

Uruguay, now a republic under a constitution of 1830, was in 
early days of its colonisation a battle-ground between Spain and 
Portugal. In 1724 Montevideo was founded, by the governor of 
Buenos Ayres, in order to strengthen Spanish hold upon the country. 
This town, in 1807, was stormed by Whitelock's troops, but 
evacuated after the disastrous affair at Buenos Ayres. During the 
war of independence Brazil seized Montevideo and occupied the 
country, but a war carried on from 1825 till 1828, between Argentina, 
in alliance with the Uruguayans, and the Brazilian land' and sea- 
forces, ended in the declaration of Uruguayan independence by the 
two other states. Then came trouble from a truculent personage, 
Juan Rosas, a native of Buenos Ayres, who was from 1835 to 1852 
" Dictator " of that city and its province, and made himself infamous 
by the " reign of terror " which he maintained. When Uruguay 
became a place of refuge to large numbers of people fleeing from 
Rosas' bloodthirsty rule, the tyrant invaded the. country, in 1839, 
with a large force and suffered defeat. In 1843 another invasion, in 
greater strength, under General Oribe, a creature of Rosas, brought 
a long siege of Montevideo; the intervention, in 1845, of Great 
Britain and France ; a two-years' blockade of Buenos Ayres ; and, 
in 1849, a temporary triumph of Rosas in the conclusion of a treaty 
giving Buenos Ayres the control of all navigation on the Plate, 
Uruguay, and Parana rivers. This exclusive policy caused a revolt 
of several provinces against the tyrant, and in 185 1, with aid from 
Brazil, Oribe was defeated in Uruguay, and his troops joined the 
successful Uruguayan leader. In February, 1852, Rosas was routed 
near Buenos Ayres and fled to England, where, after condemnation 
to death, in 1861, by the Argentine Congress, as a "professional 
murderer and notorious robber," with ample proofs of his atrocious 
conduct, he died, in peaceful retirement, near Southampton, in 1877. 
We may note that during the eight-years' successful resistance of 



758 A History of the World 

Montevideo against besiegers, the besieged had the valuable aid, 
both as a naval and military commander, of the renowned champion 
of freedom Giuseppe Garibaldi, at the head of an "Italian legion." 
The Uruguayans have, unhappily, not shown themselves fit for the 
enjoyment of liberty. After the flight of Rosas in 1852, there were 
eight successive changes of government in as many years. In i860 
Brazil set up General Flores as president ; from 1865 to 1870 the 
republic, allied with Brazil and Argentina, joined in the war against 
Paraguay; in 1868 Flores was assassinated. Then for 20 years the 
hapless republic was subject to the misrule of successive gangs of 
mere plunderers. The latest fact at our disposal concerning Uruguay 
is the assassination of President Borda on August 25th, 1897. 

Paraguay was first settled by the Spaniards in 1535, as a pro- 
vince of the Peru vice-royalty, and the city of Asuncion was founded. 
Events for a long time took the usual course : warfare with the 
natives ; Spanish misrule ; the misconduct of profligate and cruel 
adventurers from Spain nullifying the efforts of the able and devoted 
Jesuit missionaries for the conversion of the natives. In 1608 the 
home-government allowed power to pass into the hands of the 
Jesuits, and under their sole control, for a century and a half, of 
the civil and religious administration, with the exclusion of all other 
Europeans, the colony made rapid progress in Christianity and 
civilisation. In 1758 that excellent system of rule was overthrown 
by the Brazilians and Spaniards; the Jesuits were expelled, and 
Spanish viceroys were again in power with the usual results. In 
1 8 10 a revolt quickly made the country independent of Spain, and 
in 1815 a remarkable man, Dr. Francia, a law-professor who had 
a high reputation for skill, honesty, and strength of character, 
became " Dictator," wielding supreme power until his death in 1840. 
His autocratic rule was greatly admired by Thomas Carlyle and 
other advocates of the " mailed fist " style of government, and it 
must be allowed that in Paraguay, under a rigid system which pre- 
cluded all intercourse, commercial or political, with other countries, 
the condition of affairs rapidly improved in the spread of agriculture 
and education, and in the equitable administration of the courts of 
law. A brief period of disorder was followed by the appointment, 
in 1844, of Francia's nephew, Lopez, as autocratic president, under 
a new constitution. The country was then thrown open to foreigners 
and foreign trade. On Lopez's death in 1862 he was succeeded 
by his son, an enlightened ruler, who was killed in battle in 1870, 
at the close of Paraguay's disastrous war against the combined 



South America 759 

forces of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. At the end of that 
struggle the unhappy country was almost stripped of male adults, 
and the population declined from over 1,250,000 in 1857 to far less 
than 250,000 in 1873, nearly half being women and only about 
one-eighth men. A new constitution was proclaimed in 1870 with 
a Congress of two Houses, both elected directly by the people, 
and a four-years President, aided by a Cabinet of five responsible 
ministers. The country has now recovered a balance of the sexes 
in the population, and with the aid of immigration from Europe has 
made considerable progress. 

Chile (Chili) is now the most prosperous, powerful, and 
enlightened of the South American republics. Partly annexed by 
the Spaniards from Peru in 1540, with the foundation of the capital, 
Santiago, the country remained under Spanish colonial rule until 
revolt in 1810, the war lasting until the time of peace and indepen- 
dence in 1826. In that struggle a very distinguished part was 
played by the great British warrior and seaman Lord Cochrane, 
who took the command of the patriots' fleet in 181 8. In 18 19, 
at the head of but 300 men, he stormed the 15 strong forts of 
Valdivia. In the following year, in one of the most brilliant minor 
naval actions of modern history, he " cut out " with his boats the 
fine Spanish 40-gun frigate Esmeralda from under the guns of Callao 
Castle, and under his command the flag of Chile became respected 
from Panama to Cape Horn. An unsettled period followed the 
establishment of Chilian freedom, but for nearly 50 years there 
has been a settled government, with two Chambers and a President, 
the only interruption of internal peace occurring in 1891, when an 
ambitious President, Balmaceda, backed by- the army, tried to 
usurp dictatorial power. The fleet supported Congress and the 
constitution, and the " Congressists," with a new military force 
trained by an able officer who had been on the Prussian " general 
staff," routed the " Balmacedists " near Valparaiso in two battles and 
drove the usurper to suicide. War with Spain occurred in 1865, 
the chief incidents being the blockade of the coast by a Spanish 
fleet and a bombardment of Valparaiso in 1876. The results of 
the successful warfare with Peru and Bolivia have been above 
given. 

We have already seen the discovery of Brazil by Pincon, one of 
the comrades of Columbus, at the close of the 15th century. In 
1500 the country was claimed for Portugal by Cabral, and by the 
middle of the 16th century Jewish colonists, banished from Portugal, 



760 A History of the World 

began to cultivate the sugar-cane. Bahia was founded in 1549, as 
the seat of government, by the first governor, De Sousa. The vast 
territory was neglected between 1580 and 1640, when Portugal was 
an appendage of Spain, and Bahia was taken, in 1623, by a Dutch 
squadron. At various points the Hollanders held possession for 
many years, but their tyranny drove both the natives and Portuguese 
to revolt, and in 1654, when Portugal had again become independent, 
they were driven out or bought off, and Portugal was mistress of 
the country until it became independent, in 1822, under Dom 
Pedro I. as emperor. Rio de Janeiro, founded in 1567, became 
the capital before the middle of the 18th century. The prosperity 
of Brazil had rapidly grown through the discovery of gold in 1698 
and of the valuable pure-water diamonds in 1728, and the opening- 
up of the interior under the vigorous administration of affairs, in 
Portugal and her colonies, from 1760 to 1777, by the marquis de 
Pombal. Cotton and tobacco, as well as the sugar-cane, had become 
very profitable articles of tillage, but prosperity was retarded by 
an exclusive colonial and commercial system involving monopolies 
and restrictions on cultivators, heavy taxation through extortionate 
" revenue-farmers," the corrupt and tardy administration of law, 
the deliberate maintenance of ignorance among the population, and 
all the evils due to political and religious bigotry and lack of 
" sweetness and light." When the royal family of Portugal took 
refuge in Brazil in 1808, a striking change occurred. The ports 
were thrown open to foreign trade ; vexatious burdens on industry 
were removed ; education was promoted ; and new courts of law 
administered real justice. In 1840 Dom Pedro II., one of the 
most enlightened and cultured monarchs of modern times, assumed 
power as emperor, and the country enjoyed peace, with exceptions 
•already noted, and general prosperity, under his rule. The war of 
1864 to 1870 was very costly to Brazil in both money and men, but 
she gained greatly in reputation, and benefited both herself and 
other commercial nations in making the navigation of the La Plata 
river-system free and open. Slavery was abolished in 1888. In 
the following year the revolutionary spirit of South American 
politics, a power which seems incapable of being exorcised, caused 
a military revolt of obscure origin. The emperor bowed to the 
storm, and withdrew with his family to Europe, and a Brazilian 
republic was proclaimed as the " United States of Brazil," under 
General Fonseca as President. This proceeding was followed by 
a financial crisis ; a quarrel of the President with the Congress ; 



50 




THE WORLD, SHOWN 




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BRITISH POSSESSIONS, I< 



[p. 760. 



South America 761 

his attempt at usurpation of power, in the Balmaceda style, with 
the help of the troops ; the restoration of the power of Congress, 
as in Chile, with the aid of the navy ; the resignation of Fonseca ; 
a naval revolt under his successor, suppressed in 1894; and the 
collapse, in August, 1895, of a rising in the south. The last 
countries remaining for notice on the continent are the Guianas, on 
the north-east coast. 

The name "Guiana" takes us back to Elizabethan and early 
Stuart days of adventure, exploration, and rapine, when Englishmen, 
drawn by stories of boundless gold to be won, and by religious and 
national hostility, went forth to " harry " the foe's possessions on the 
" Spanish Main " and in adjacent regions. The Spaniards, about 
1500, explored the coast, and European adventurers, of various 
nations, made attempts at settlement late in the 16th and early in 
the 17th centuries. It was to Guiana that Raleigh went in search 
of the fabled land " El Dorado," with its golden city of Manoa, in 
1595, sailing up the Orinoco, viewing the splendid tropical vegetation, 
and bringing back some of the auriferous quartz-rock which is now, 
under proper treatment, making a good return to investors. Early 
in the 17th century the Dutch West India Company made a 
settlement at Berbice, and were followed, about 1650, by the English, 
who founded Paramaribo, now the capital of Dutch Guiana, on the 
river Surinam. The French had already a foothold in Cayenne, 
and established their present colony there in 1674. In 1667, under 
the Treaty of Breda, the English government ceded Surinam to 
Holland in exchange for New York (then " New Amsterdam "), and, 
with the exception of short periods in war-time between European 
Powers, the territory now forming British Guiana was in Dutch hands 
until our conquest in 1803. In Dutch times cotton was the chief 
object of tillage, but when the Southern States in America began 
to grow it largely, sugar became the substitute in British Guiana, 
which, in 1891, had nearly 70,000 acres, out of about 80,000 under 
tillage, in sugar-estates. In 1884 gold was found, and in the 
11 years from 1886 to 1897 the colony shipped to England gold 
worth over ^3,000,000 sterling. British Guiana has no history in 
the 19th century except a negro-insurrection in 1823 due to the 
tyrannical conduct of the governor, General Murray, backed by the 
slave-owners. Not a white man lost his life, but some hundreds 
of negroes were killed and wounded in action, or executed, or 
barbarously flogged, and an Independent missionary, John Smith, 
who had really exercised the best influence over the negroes, in the 



762 A History of the World 

interests of peace and order, died in prison from ill-usage. This 
missionary-martyr, British in blood, judicially murdered, under martial 
law, by British " officers and gentlemen " who professed Christianity, 
was of great seryce, in his death, to the cause of slave-emancipation 
which finally prevailed - in 1833. In Dutch Guiana slavery was 
abolished in 1863. French Guiana, or Cayenne, is noted for a 
deadly climate, and is now used, as a penal settlement, only for 
prisoners from Africa (Arabs and negroes) and Asia (Annamites). 
Slavery was abolished in 1848. 

Chapter IV. — Australasia.* 

A British historian may be pardoned if he utters a paean of triumph 
concerning a region — a vast continental island and adjacent territories 
— where British power has, since settlement, reigned always and over 
all, without dispute from Europeans, through true colonisation, 
without conquest, save to some extent in New Zealand ; where no 
flag save the British has ever waved. The origin of our Australian 
dominion was, indeed, ignominious, but the colonial prison-land of 
convicts soon became, under the influence of British energy, a vast 
wool-farm, a scene of profitable tillage, a region of gold-mines of 
unsurpassed wealth, and, under constitutional rule, under self-govern- 
ment, the abcde of new nations, almost wholly British in blood, 
reproducing the mother-country, with a new type of Briton, in every 
phase of her complex and highly developed civilisation. Scarcely 
more than a century of time has seen the wondrous work wrought 
by a people who understand the art of colonising. As regards 
discovery, we put aside the claims of early Portuguese, Spanish, and 
Dutch navigators, who saw the land, but had no thought of settlement. 
In the 17th century Dutch captains were much on the north-western 
and western coasts, as the names on the map testify, and the great 
island was, far into the 19th century, known as "New Holland," the 
modern name being taken, about 181 7, from a book of voyages 
written by Samuel Purchas under James I. Under William III. 
Dampier visited the western coast. The true discoverer — like his pro- 
totype Columbus, a re-discoverer — of this new world in the Southern 
Seas, was the famous James Cook, a native of the Yorkshire seaboard, 
who rose from " before the mast " to be a captain in the royal navy. 
As lieutenant in command of the ship Endeavour, on a scientific 

* For Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand readers are referred to the ex- 
cellent volume The Australian Commonwealth in The Story of the Nations series. 



/ 



Australasia 763 

voyage with astronomers and other scientists on board, he reached 
the south-eastern coast of Australia in April, 1770, at Botany Bay, 
and took possession of the country, as " New South Wales," for his 
sovereign, George III. Settlement began in January, 1788, with 
the arrival at the same point of the famous " First Fleet " of n 
sail, under Captain Phillip, bearing about 1,100 convicts, officials, 
guards, and free settlers. A move was quickly made to the splendid 
harbour called Port Jackson, and on a little cove with a good supply 
of landwater the town of Sydney was founded. Australian history 
had begun, and, with the work of convicts and the advent of more 
free settlers, New South Wales grew in wealth and importance. 
In 1797 Captain MacArthur introduced merino-sheep, and the 
future of the colony was assured. In 18 13 the Blue Mountains were 
crossed, and a vast territory was laid open. The free immigrants, in 
the course of time, greatly outnumbered the convict-population, and 
the ceasing of the transportation-system made an end of the taint and 
trouble, except as regards the " bushrangers " who, with rabbits, 
rashly introduced with direful results, were long a pest to Australian 
settlers. From New South Wales sprang the colony of Victoria, 
which became a separate state in 185 1, and quickly received a rush 
of immigrants due to the discovery of the gold whose value, in less than 
40 years, had reached ^230,000,000 sterling. Melbourne became 
a great and thriving city. In both these colonies " responsible rule " 
was established, on a democratic basis, in 1855, and there is no 
further history save that of peaceful progress, with ebbs as well as 
flows of the tide, but with a general steady advance towards the 
present position. Queensland, the most northerly portion of New 
South Wales, became a separate colony in 1859, with a Parliament 
whose popular House, the Legislative Assembly, is elected under 
manhood suffrage. South Australia, founded by a chartered com- 
pany in 1836, and Western Australia, settled in 1829, have pursued 
the same course, the development of the last being of later date, 
and largely due to the recent discovery of gold in the west-central 
district. 

The exploration of the interior of Australia was the work of 
many daring, hardy, and adventurous men, some of whom perished 
in conflict with natives, whose whole number, now much diminished, 
did not probably exceed 500,000, at the time of Cook's arrival, in 
a region nearly as large as Europe ; others died of thirst in desert- 
regions ; others succeeded in opening up territory of valuable 
pasture. In 1872 the telegraphic wires were carried from the 



764 A History of the World 

south to the northern coast, and across to Java, placing the continent 
within an hour of London for news. Tasmania, first settled in 
1803, as a convict-depot dependent on New South Wales, became 
a distinct colony in 1824, and, gradually freed from the criminal 
taint, has become one of the finest of our smaller colonies, rich 
in fruit and metals. 

New Zealand, also practically discovered by Captain Cook, was 
colonised in 1840, and, after warfare with the fine athletic natives 
(Maoris) at various times, has become one of our most flourishing 
colonial possessions, self-governed, loyal, like all our Australasian 
colonies, abundantly rich in sheep and gold. 

The restless spirit of man, stirred by the discovery of the New 
World, has in the course of the last four centuries hunted out almost 
every habitable and uninhabitable region that exists on our planet. 
In the 16th and 17th centuries British, Dutch, and Russian ex- 
plorers discovered, in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, Davis Strait, 
Nova Zembla, West Greenland, Baffin's Bay, Spitsbergen, the 
mouths of the great Siberian rivers, and Behring Strait, establishing 
the fact that Asia and America are not united. In the 19th century 
British, Norwegian, Austrian, and American navigators and land- 
travellers made known great areas of ice-bound, snow-covered land 
to the north of North America and elsewhere, and British mariners 
discovered a vast continent lying around the South Pole. During the 
period since the re-discovery of America, and notably in the 18th and 
19th centuries, the region called Polynesia, with its countless island- 
groups and islets, has been thoroughly explored, and the earth-hunger 
and trade-competition of the modern commercial and colonising age 
have caused the appropriation of most of the territory by European 
Powers. Apart from Polynesia proper, the great island called New 
Guinea has been recently divided between Holland, Great Britain, 
and the German Empire. In the western Pacific, Spain (in addition 
to the Philippine Islands where, as we write, stirring events have 
occurred in the war with the United States) holds the Mariana, 
Pelew (Palau), Sulu, and Caroline groups. The Bismarck and 
Marshall Archipelagoes, with part of the Solomon Islands (shared 
with Great Britain), belong to Germany. Our country holds, or 
" protects,'' Cook's (or Hervey) Islands, the Ellice group, the Fiji 
Isles, the Banks and Santa Cruz isles, Tonga, ard many scattered 
islets and groups. To France belong New Caledonia, the Marquesas 
isles, Tahiti, and others. New Caledonia, discovered by Captain 
Cook in 1774, was annexed by France in 1853, and has since been 



Australasia 7^5 

used as a convict-colony. The Tahiti archipelago, first accurately 
described by Captain Cook, was by him named the Society Islands, 
in honour of the Royal Society which had caused the dispatch of 
the scientific exploring expedition under his command. In 1842, 
after some lawless proceedings towards Queen Pomare, sovereign 
of the island (called Otaheite by Cook), who was very friendly to 
Great Britain and the missionaries, and towards a missionary named 
Pritchard, who was our consul, the French government established 
a " protectorate " which virtually made Queen Pomare a mere 
puppet until her death in 1878. In her trouble she appealed to 
the Queen of England, and the government headed by Sir Robert 
Peel insisted on and obtained compensation for the consul. Great 
Britain and France have never been nearer to war since Waterloo 
than on that occasion. In 1880 the French government took full 
possession of the islands. The New Hebrides, thoroughly explored 
by Cook in 1773, are notorious for the cruel kidnapping of the 
natives for many years to serve as labourers on the plantations in 
Queensland, Fiji, and New Caledonia. As far as British territory 
is concerned, these proceedings have recently come to an end. 
French aims at annexation have been checked through the strong 
opposition of our Australian colonists, and the New Hebrides, like 
the Tonga and Samoa islands, are now under the protection of our 
High Commissioner of the Western Pacific. The Samoa group, 
called Navigators' Islands, from the skill of the native boatmen, 
by the French explorer Bougainville, on his visit in 1768, were 
Christianised by missionaries who began their labours in 1830. 
Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, in 1889, recognised 
the independence of the natives, who now dwell under the charge 
of a sovereign of their own election, with a Supreme Court for the 
adjustment of civil and criminal matters. 

We conclude with a reference to the history of the archipelago 
now called Hawaii (Captain Cook's " Owhyhee "), otherwise the 
Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands. Re-discovered by Cook in 1778, 
they were named by him " Sandwich Islands " from the Lord 
Sandwich who was then at the head of the Admiralty Board, Hawaii 
being the chief island of the group. In 1779 Cook was killed by 
the natives in a sudden outbreak of rage. The islands became a 
kingdom under Kamehameha I., who died in 18 19. His successor, 
Kamehameha II., by his abolition of idolatry simultaneously through- 
out the islands, left his people in the remarkable position of having 
no religion at all. Vancouver, a comrade of Cook's on his visit in 



766 A History of the World 

1778, was again at Hawaii in 1792 and 1794, and was requested by 
the king to send out religious teachers from England. It was not, 
however, until 1820, from American missionaries, that the islanders 
received instruction in Christianity. The work went on apace, and 
in the course of less than half a century the islanders had become 
a civilised people. The king and queen both died in England in 
1823, during a visit to the strange isles on the other side of the 
globe. Under the third sovereign of the above name, in 1840, a 
constitutional form of rule, with a council of nobles and a repre- 
sentative assembly, took the place of the previous despotism, and 
three years later the British, French, and United States governments 
recognised and guaranteed the independence and integrity of the 
kingdom. On the death of the king in 1854 he was succeeded by 
his nephew, of the same name, and he, in 1863, by a fifth monarch 
of the line, who reigned till his death in 1873. A chief chosen by 
the people then reigned for two years, and on his death in 1874 
King Kalakaua was elected, to be succeeded in 1891 by his eldest 
sister. The revolutionary spirit of the age broke out, after a 
democratic change of the constitution some years previously, in 
January, 1893, and a "Committee of Public Safety" proclaimed 
the end of monarchy and the establishment of a " provisional govern- 
ment." In July, 1894, a republic arose, with a President and two 
Chambers, elected under a manhood-suffrage with the educational 
proviso that a voter must be able to speak, read, and write either 
Hawaiian or English. The capital, Honolulu, with 30,000 inhabitants, 
has the electric light and lines of tramways, with the further advan- 
tages of an Anglican bishop, a Roman Catholic bishop, and ministers 
of various denominations for the population of a country con- 
taining about 30,000 natives, 8,500 half-castes, 21,600 Chinese, 
25,000 Japanese, 15,000 Portuguese, 3,000 Americans, 2,250 British, 
1,500 Germans, and about 2,000 Norwegians, French, Polynesians, 
and other foreigners. All forms of religion are permitted and 
protected, nearly all the natives being Christians. 

Here this record — the world's history — ends, after a progress 
through many ages and many lands. Starting from ancient Egypt, 
it has come at last to modern Hawaii, 5,000 years and half a world 
away, and the story, for the present, is perforce concluded from lack 
of matter and in default of prophetic power. It is one with several 
morals for those who care to seek and know how to find them. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), 212, 
231, 292, 533, 660 

Aahmes (Amasis), 9, 14 

Abbas I., Shah, or Abbas the 
Great, 679 

Abbas Pasha, 690 

Abbaside Caliphs, 211 

Abbaside dynasty (Persia), 
678 

Abd-el-Kadr, 693 

Abd-er-Rahman, 209, 210 

Abd-er-Rahman (another), 211 

Abd-er-Rahman III. of Cor- 
dova, 236, 237 

Abdul-Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, 

640, 641 

Abdul-Hamid II. (Turkey), 

641, 643 
Abdul-Mejid (Turkey), 640 
Abdur Rahman Khan, 676 
Abelard, 368, 369 
Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, 546, 

752 
Aberdeen, 275, 476 
Abolition Act, 568 
"Abolitionists" (U.S.), 738 
Abomey, 708, 709 
Abraham, 19, 29 
Abu Hamed, 696 
Abyssinia, 696, 697 
Academic School, 118 
Acarnania, 71, 116 
Accad, Accadai, 16, 17, ig, 21 
Accadians, Shumiro-, 16, 17 
Accusatoies (Rome), 163 
Achaea, Achaeans, 81, 96 
Achaean League, 114, 117 
Achaia, 71, 73 
Acre (Ake, Akko), 39, 41, 252, 

254, 255, 259, 260, 284 
Acropolis (Athens), 94, 100, 

107 
Act of 1833 (India), 648 
Act of Six Articles, 411 
Act of Supremacy, 410 
Act of Uniformity, 412 
Adams, John (U.S.), 728 
Adams, Samuel and John 

(U.S.), 533 
Aden, 681 
Adiabene, 68 
Adonis, 40 

Adrian IV., Pope, 274, 288 
Adrianople, 357, 358, 359 



AZdiles (Rome), 127 

vEgean Archipelago, 71 

/Egina, 73, ico, 115 

iEmilius Paulus, 116, 140 

yEolians, 72 

jEquians, 134 

^Eschylus, 90, 97 

Aetius, 178, 193 

xEtolia, 7 c 

^Etolian League, 114, 116 

Afghanistan, 668, 675, 676, 679 

Afghans, 669 

Afghans of Ghor, 656 

Africa, 699, 700, 701, 712, 713, 

714 
Africa, South (British), 701 
" Africanders," 709 
Agade, 18 
Agathokles, 47, 48 
Agbatana (Ecbatana), 53, 56, 

61 
Agesilaus, 82, 107 
Agis IV., 115 
Agra, 657, 666 
Agricola, 193 
Agrigentum, 46, 138 
Agrippa II., 37 
Agrippina, 164 
Ahab, 23, 31, 40, 43 
Ahaz, 31 

Ahmednuggur, 665 
Aidan, St., 2oi_ 
Akassa, 704 

Akbar the Great, 656, 657 
Akhaemenidae, The, 54 
Alabama, The, 733 
'' Alabama claims," 577, 745 
Alabama (state), 734, 739 
Alani, 167 
Alaric, 176, 246 
Alaska, 744 
Alban, St., 193 
Albania, 361 
Albany, Duke of (Rcgent\ 

3i5» 412 
Alberoni, Cardinal, 528 
Albert of Austria, 445 
Albert of Brandenburg, 402 
Albert I. of Germany, 330 
Albert Nyanza (lake), 700 
Albertus Magnus, 264 
Albigenses, 264, 281 
Alboin, 181, 247 
Albuquerque, 352, 658, £83 
Alcaeus, 121 

Alcibiades, 103, 104, 105, 106 
767 



Al-cluyd (Dumbarton), 197 

Alcuin, 213 

Alemanni, The, 169, 173, 174, 

19°. 33 2 . 
Alessandria, 289, 295, 406 
Alexander of Bulgaria, 642 
Alexander the Great, 33, 44, 

58, 59, 60, 61, no, in, 112, 655 
Alexander Nevski, St., 325 
Alexander of Pherae, 108 
Alexander III., Pope, 289 
Alexander VI., Pope, 387, 389 
Alexander I. of Russia, 549, 

562, 563, 568, 631, 734 
Alexander II. of Russia, 634, 

63S. 636, 641 
Alexander III. of Russia, 636 
Alexander II I. of Scotland, 275 
Alexander of Servia, 642 
Alexander Severus, 168 
Alexandria, 33, in, 113, 155, 

^38, 356, 388, 545. 546, 688, 

690 
Alexis of Russia, 469 
Alexius, Emperor, 217 
Alexius Comnenus, Emperor, 

244, 248, 250, 283, 284 
Alexius Ducas, 285 
Alfonso I. of Asturias, 210 
Alfonso III. of Asturias, 240 
Alfonso VI. of Asturias, 241 
Alfonso VIII. of Castile, 282, 

283 
Allonso X. of Castile, 342 
Alfonso I. (Affonso Hen- 

riques) of Portugal, 350 
Alfonso III. of Portugal, 350 
Alfonso IV. of Portugal, 351 
Alfonso V. of Portugal, 3^2 
Alfonso VI. of Portugal, 528 
Alfonso XII. of Spain, 619 
Alfonso XIII. of Spain, 619 
Alfred the Great, 219, 220, 221 
Algeria, 692, 693, 701 
Algiers, 356, 407, 485, 531, 692, 

693 
Algonquins, 515 
A'hambra, 239, 347 
Alighur, 666 
Alikhanoff, General, 676 
Al-Mamun, Caliph, 238, 239 
Almansor, Caliph, 238, 239 
Almanzor, 240 
Almeria, 240, 346 
Almohades, 241, 282, 283 
Ahnohades dynasty, 692 



768 



Index 



Almoravides, 241 
Alompra of Burma, 667 
Alp Arslan, 244 
Alsace, 290, 456, 457, 483, 487, 

494, 603 
Alva, Duke of, 439, 407, 440 
Alvaro de Luna, 343 
Alyattes, 50, 51 
Amadeus of Savoy, 619 
Amalfi, 257 

Amboise, Cardinal d', 391 
Amboyna, 684 
Amenemhat I., 9 
Amenemhat 11., 9 
Amenhotep III., 10 
America, Central, 754 
America, Discovery of, 377 
America, North, 379, 483, 514 
America, South, 379, 755 
America, United States of, 

534. 535, 54°, 648. 049, 651, 

652, 727-747 
American colonies (Great 

Britain), 533 
Amerigo Vespucci, 379 
Amhara, 697, 698 
Amherst, Lord, 647, 667 
Amiens, 375, 602 
Amoy, 648 

Amphipolis, 102, 109 
Amsterdam, 365, 442, 487 
Anastasius, Emperor, 184, 190 
Anatolia, 356 
Ancona, 183 
Andalusia, 236, 237, 239, 240, 

241, 345, 349 
Andronicus II., Emperor, 357 
Andronicus III., Emperor, 358 
Angles, 160, 195 
Anglia, East, 19s, 197, 203, 

219, 220, 221, 223, 224 
Anglicans (Anglican Church), 

411, 412, 479, 481, 482, 593 
Angola, 701, 716 
Angus, Earl of, 412, 413 
Anjou, 268, 270, 324 
Anna, Empress of Russia, 504 
Annam, 686 
Annapolis, 518 
Anne of Austria, 483 
Anne, Duchess of Brittany, 324 
Anne of England, 479 
Anselm, St., 267, 369 
Ansgar of Picardy, 229 
Anthemius, 183 
Anlhcsteria, The, 75 
Antigonus of Macedonia, 114 
Antioch, 66, 114, 186, 253, 251, 

677 
Antiochus II. of Syria, 60, 142, 

145 
Antiochus III. of Syria (the 

Great), 60 
Antiochus IV. of Syria (Epi- 

phanes), 33 
Antipater, 114 

" Ami-Reformation," The, 429 
Antoninus Pius, 67, 166 
Antony (Marcus Antonius), 

64, 65, 156, 157 
Antwerp, 433, 438, 440, 442, 

443, 444, 567, 615 
Antwerp, Sack of, 441 
Aphrodite, 75 
Apollo (Phcebus), 75, 76, 78 
Appian Road ( I 'ia Afipia), 132 



Appomattox Court-house 

(U.S.), 743 
Apries (Hophra), 14 
Apulia, Apulians, 124, 15c, 284 
Aquae Sextiae, 148, 149 
Aquinas, Thomas, 264, 369 
Aquitaine, 214, 270, 271, 273 
Arabi Pasha, 691 
Arabia, Arabs, 21, 113, 203, 

204, 238, 680, 689, 691, 693, 694 
Aracan, 667 
Aradus, 10, 39, 41, 44 
Aragon, 282, 342, 462 
Aratus of Sicyon, 115 
Arbitration, 576 
Arcadia, 71, 73, 83, 108, 115 
Arcadian League, 108 
Archangel, 468 
" Archdukes," The (Spanish 

Netherlands), 445 
Archelaus of Macedon, 109 
A>chons, 84 
Arcot, 662 
Ardys, 50 
Areopagus, 85 
Areopagus, Court of, 99 
Ares, 75 

Argentine Republic (Argen- 
tina), 754, 756 
Argolis, 71, 73 
Argonautic voyage, 71 
Argos, 83, 84, 96 
Ariminum, 132 
Ariovistus, 161 
Aristides, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 

98 
Aristodemus, 83 
Aristomenes, 83 
Aristophanes, 102 
Aiistotle, in, 120, 180, 238 
Arius (the " heretic "), 173 
Arkansas (U.S.), 735, 739 
Armagh, 200 
Armenia, Armenians, 61, 64, 

65, 66, 67, 150, 151, 643, 677 
Arminians, 1 he, 447 
Arminius (see Herman), 161, 

162, 164, 446 
Army-reform, 585 
Arndt (poet), 503 
Arpad, 24 
Arpad dynasty (Hungary), 

3 2 7 
Arran, Earl of, 113, 414 
Arsaces I., 60 
Arsaces II., 60 
Arsaces III., 60 
Arsacidae, The, 61, 65 
Art (architecture), 374 
Art (mediaeval), 372, 373 
Artabanus, 6c, 69 
Artabanus V., 68 
Artaphernes, 57, 88 
Artaxata, 151 
Artaxerxes I. of Persia 

(Longimaii'-s), 57, 100, 677 
Artaxerxes II., 58 
Artaxerxes III., 58 
Artaxerxes Mnemon, 14 
Artaxerxes Ochus, 43 
Artemis, 75 
A'temisium, 96 
Arteveldt, Jacob and Philip 

van, 319 
Arthur (Duke of Brittany), 

270 



Arthur (son of Henry VII.), 

393 
Arthur, President (U.S.), 

747 
Articles, Forty-two (Anglican 

Church), 411 
Articles, Thirty T -nine (Angli- 
can Church), 412 
Artois, Count of, 537 
Arundel, Archbishop, 307,308 
Aryan migration, 3 
Aryans, The, 3, 26, 69, 70, 654 
Asa, 13 
Asaba, 704 
Ascalon 252 
Ascension (isle), 387 
A--culum, 150 
Aseerghur, 665 
Ashantis, The, 702, 703 
Ashburton, Lord, 730 
Ashtoreth (Astarte), 40 
Asia, Central, 35s, 356 
Asia Minor, 55, 70, m, 113, 

145, 175, 244, 357, 358 
Asoka, 655 
Assam, 667, 677 
"Assembly of the Notables" 

(France), 527 
Asshurbanipal, 50 
Asshurbanipal V. (Sardana- 

palus), 26, 27, 43, 50 
Asshurnazirpal, 23 
Assur, 2, 22 
Assyrians, 19, 21, 28 
Asturias, 240 
Astyages, 53, 51, 53 
Asuncion, 756 
Atahualpa of Peru, 385 
Atchei n (Sumatra), 685 
Athaliah, Queen, 31 
Athanasius, St., 263 
Athelney, Isle of, 220 
Athelstan, King, 22], 222 
Athena 1'olias, 75, 76 
Athens, Athenians, 58, 74, 80, 

84, 86 88, 94, 96-98, 101, 103, 

105-110, 114, 115, 117-122, 

150, 166 
Atlanta (U.S.), 742, 743 - 
Atlantic cable, 745 
Attalus III. of Pergamus, 145 
Attica, 57, 71-73, 87, 101, T02 
Attila the Hun, 177, 178, 183, 

246 
Auckland, Lord (India), 663, 

669 
Augsburg, 290 

Augsburg, Confession of, 403 
Augsburg, Diet of, 392, 403,404 
Augsburg, League of, 492 
Augurs (Rome), 129 
"Augustan Age,'' The, 159 
Augustine of Canterbury 

(Austin, St.), 182, 202 
Augustine, St., 263 
Augustus Caesar, Emperor, 

65, 145, 157-159, 2 45 
Augustus II. of Poland, 499 
Aulic Council,The (Germany), 

39 2 
Aurangzeb, Emperor (India), 

657-659 
Aurelian, Emperor, 169 
Aurelius, Emperor, 76 
Australasia, 762 
Australia, 763 



Index 



69 



Australia, South, 763 

Australia, Western, 763 

Austral an colonies, 576 

Austrasia, 191 

Austria, 213, 2?8, 330, 334, 501, 
506, 507, 510, 513, 539, 540, 
543-545, 554, 555, 561, 562, 
574, 606, 607, 609, 6io, 614, 
617, 621, 641, 734 

Austria, House of, 331, 332 

Ava, 667, 672 

Avars, The, 187, 188, 212 

Averroes, 238 

Avesta, The, 52 

Avicenna, 238 

Avidius Cassius, 67 

Avignon, 295, 337, 489 

Aviz, House of (Portugal), 464 

Axum, Kingdom of (Abys- 
sinia), 697 

Ayub Khan, 675 

Azov, Sea of, 505 

Aztecs, The (Mexico), 383 



B. 

Baal, 40 

Baber, 656 

Babylon, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 

54, 55, 56, 5 8 
Babylonia, 20, 32, 55, 60, 61, 

66, 67, 112 
Bacchiadae, The, 80 
Bacon, Roger, 264 
Bactra (Zariaspa), 52 
Bactria, Bactrians (Bokhara), 

52, 53, 54, 60, ii2, 113 
Bad by, John, 308 
Baden, 457, 555, 599, 609, 610, 

611 
Baffin, 514 

Bagdad, 61, 238, 356, 678, 679 
Bahamas, 752 
Bahia, 758 

Baird, Sir David, 665 
Baker, Sir Samuel, 690, 700 
B.ildwin, Count of P'landers, 
253, 285 

Balearic Isles, 49, 246 
Baliol, John, 299, 300 

Balkan States, 642 

Balmaceda, President, of 
Chili, 729 

Baltic Canal, 613 

Baltic Sea, 49, 363 

Baltimore, 729 

Baner, General, 455, 456 

Bangalore, 664 

Bangkok, 681 

Bantu race, 709 

Baptists, 48c 

Baratieri, General, 696 

Barbados, 751 

Barbarossa, 252. See Frede- 
rick I. of Germany 

Barbarossa (the corsair), 407, 
472, 691, 692 

Barbary piracy, 577 

Barbary States, 691 

Barca, 45 

Bards, 192, 276 

Barnes, Sir Edward, 683 

Barneveldt, Jan van Olden, 
445> 446, 447, 448 

Barras, 543 



Barri, Comtesse du, 526 

Bartholomew Diaz, 353, 354 

Bartholomew's, St., Day, 424 

Basil II. of Greek Empire, 243 

Basra (Bassora), 238, 679 

Bassein, 658, 662 

Bastille, Storming of, 537 

Basutos, 709 

Batavi, The, 161 

Batavian Republic, 243, 543, 

_ 546, 552 

Batory, Stephen, of Poland, 

467 
Batoum, 641 
Battenberg, Prince Henry of, 

7°3 
Battle Abbey, 226 
Battles : — 
Aboukir (or Alexandria), 546 
Abu-Klea, 6 5 
Actium, 157 
Adowa, 699 
Adrianople, 176 
iEgates Islands, 139 
yEgospotami, 106 
Aescesdun, 219 
Agincourt, 308 
Aix (Basque) Roads, 567 
Alarcos, 2S2 
Albuera, 559 
Alexandria, Bombardment 

of, 690 
Algiers, Bombardment of, 

577 
Aliual, 670 
Allia, 134 
Alma, 640 
Amoaful, 703 
Angora, 3-9 

Aqua; Sextise (Aix), 149 
Arbela, 112 
Areola, 544 

Arcot (siege), 660 
Argaum, 665 

Arginusae, 106 

Arminius and Varus, 162 

Arnee, 663 

Arogee Pass, 699 

Arques, 426 

Arretium, 136 

Artemisium, 96 

Asculum, 137 

Aspern, 561 

Aspromonte, 624 

Assaye, 665 

Atbara, 697 

Athlone, 478 

Auerstadt, 556 

Aughrim, 478 

Augsburg (siege), 456 

Austerlitz, 555 

Ayacucho, 753 

Badajoz (siege), 560 

Bannockburn, 302 

Bapaume, 602 

Barnet, 313 

Bautzen, 563 

Beachy Head, 492 

Beaumont, 600 

Belfort (siege), 602 

Beneventum, 137 

Bergen-op-Zoom (siege), 44! 

Bhurtpore (siege), first, 666 
second, 668 

Blenheim, 497 
Bornhoved, 364 



Battles {continued) : — 
Borodino, 562 
Bosworth, 314 
Bothwell Bridge, 476 
Bouvines, 272, 279, 280, 318 
Breitenfeld, first, 454 ; 

second, 456 
Brunanburh, 221 
Buckersdorf, 513 
Buena Vista, 736 
Bull Run (or Manassas), 739 
Bunker's Hill, 534 
Busaco, 559 
Buxar, 660 

Byzantium (siege), no 
Camperdown, 549 
Cannae, 140 

Carthage (siege), 143-145 
Castiglione, 544 
Castillejos, 694 
Castillon, 323 
Cerro Gordo, 737 
Chaeronea, no 
Chalons, 178 
Chancellorsville, 742 
Chattanooga, 742 
Chillianwallah, 671 
Chocim, 467 
Churubusco, 737 
Ciudad Rodrigo (siege), 560 
Clontarf, 228 
Cnidus, 107 

Constantinople (siege), 360 
Copenhagen, first, 549 ; 
second, 558 

Coronea, 107 

Corte Nuova, 292 

Corufia, 559 

Courcelles (Colombey- 
Nouilly), 600 

Courtrai, 319 

Covadonga, 209 

Crannon, 114 

Crecy, 303, 304 

Cuddalore. See Porto Novo 

Culloden, 4" 

Cunaxa, 58 

Custozza, 624 

Cynoscephalae, 116 

Delhi (siege), 674 

Delium, 103 

Denain, 497 

Dessau, Bridge of, 452 

Dettingen, 509 

Dorylseum, 250 

Douro, The, 559 

Dresden, 564 

Dreux, 423 

Drumclog, 476 

Dunbar, 475 

Dunes, The, 475, 484 

Dunkirk (siege), 475 

Durazzo (siege), 284 

Eckmuhl, 561 

Ecnomus, 138 

El-Teb, 695 

Essling, 561 

Ethandun, 220 

Eurymtdon, 99 

Eylau, 556 

Falkirk, 300 
Fehrbellin, 499 
Ferozeshah, 
Fleurus, 543 
Flodden, 394 
Forbach, 600 



7/0 



Index 



Battles (continued) : — 

Frederikshall (siege), 500 

Friedland, 556 

Fuentes d'Onoro, 559 

Gallipoli, 341 

Gembloux, 442 

Genoa (siege), 546 

Geok-Tepe (siege), 638 

Gettysburg, 742 

Ghazni (siege), 669 

"Glorious First of June'' 
(Lord Howe's), 549 

Goojerat, 672 

Granada (siege), 347 

Granicus, in 

Granson, 334 

Gravelotte (St. Privat), 600 

Haarlem (siege), 440 

Halidon Hill, 303 

Harfleur (siege), 308 

Harlaw, 315 

Hastings. See Senlac 

Hedgeley Moor, 313 

Heiligerlee, 439 

Heraclea, 137 

Herrings, Of the, 322 

Hexham, 313 

Hippo Regius (siege), 176 

Hochkirchen, 511 

Hohenlinden, 546 

Homildon Hill, 314 

Hyderabad, 669 

Inkermann, 640 

Isandula (Isandhlvvana), 711 

Issus, 44, III 

Ivry, 427 

Jargeau, 323 

Jarnac, 423 

Jemminghem, 439 

Jena, 556 

Kadesia, 678 

Kars (siegt), 641 
" Kassassin, 691 

Katzbach, The, 564 

Killiecrankie, 478 

Kolin, 510 

Koniggratz (or Sadovva), 610 

Kriigersdorp, 712 

Kunersdorf, 512 

La Hogue, 493 

Lade, 57 

Landen (or Neerwinden), 

_ 493 

Largs, 275 

Las Navas de Tolosa, 283 
Le Mans, 602 
Lech, The, 454 
Legnano, 289 
Leipzig, 564 
Lepanto, 441, 473 
Leuctra, ic8 
Leuthen, 511 
Lewes, 273 
Lexington, 534 
Leyden (siege), 440 
Liegnitz, 512 
Ligny, 565 
Lissa, 624 
Lodi, 544 

Londonderry (siege), 478 
Loudon Hill, 300 
Lowositz, 510 
Lundy's Lane, 722 
Lutter, 452 

Lutzen, first, 455 ; second, 
S63 



Battles (continued) : — 
Maciejowice, 507 
Maestricht (siege), 442 
Magdeburg (siege), 453 
Magenta, 623 
Maharajpoor, 669 
Maheidpoor, 667 
Maiwand, 675 
Malaga (siege), 346 
Malplaquet, 496 
Malta (siege), 472 
Manzikert, 244 
Marathon, 57, 88-93 
Marchfeld, 330 
Marengo, 546 
Marignano, 3Q2 
Marsaglia, 493 
Marston Moor, 460 
Maska River, 693 
Maxen, 512 
Meanee, 669 
Megiddo, 10 
Meissen, 512 
Memphis, 12 
Mentana, 624 
Metaurus, 141 
Metemmeh, 695 
Metija, 693 
Metz (siege), 602 
Minden, 512 

Missolonghi (siege), 6^8 
Mohacs, first, 470; second, 501 
Mohi, 3S5 
Moncontour, 423 
lilonitor and Merritnac, 741, 

742 
Mont-Cassel, 488 
Montebello, 623 
Montl'hery, 324 
Mookerheyde, 440 
Morgarten, 333 
Mortimer's Cioss, 311 
Mouzon, 600 
Mudki, 670 
Mii hi berg, 404 
Muhldorf, 330 
Munda, 156 
Murten (Morat), 334 
Mycale, 98 
Mylae, 138 
Nafels, 334 
Nahavend, 678 
Nancy, 334 
Narva, 499 
Naseby, 460 
Navarino, 629 
Nectansmere, 197 
Neville's Cross, 303 
New Orleans, 729 
Nicopolis, 358 
Nieuport, 445 
Nile (Aboukir Bay), 545 
Nineveh, 678 
Nisib, 689 
Nive, 560 
Nivelle, 560 
Nordlingen, first, 455 ; 

second, 456 
Northampton, 310 
Notium, 106 
Novara, 6.1 
Orleans (siege), 321 
Orthez, 561 
O-tcnd (siege), 445 
Otterburn (orChev y Chase), 
3'4 



Battles (continued) : — 
Oudenarde, 496 
Ourique (Orik), 353 
Palo Alto, 736 
Panipat, first, 656; second, 

657 ; third, 658 
Paris (siege), first, 601, 602 ; 

second, 604 
Patay, 323 
Pavia, 405 
Penjdeh, 676 
Pharsalus, 155, 156 
Philippi, 157 
Ping Yang, 653 
Pinkie, 414 
Pirot, 642 
Plassey, 660 
Plataea, 95, 97 
Plevna (siege), 641 
Poitiers, 304 
Pollilore, 663 
Populonia, 136 
Porto Novo (or Cuddalore), 

662 
Prague, 510 
Preston, 4^0 
Pultowa, 499 
Punniar, 669 
Pydna, 109 
Pyramids, The, 545 
Pyrenees, The, 560 
Quatre Bras, 565 
Ouebec, 524 

Queenston Heights, 721 
Ramillies, 496 
Ramnuggur, 671 
Ravenna, 390 
Resaca, 736 
Rivoli, 544 

Rochelle, La (siege), 461 
Rocroy, 456 
Rodney and Comte de 

Grasse (West Indies), 534 
Rolica, 559 
Rome (siege), 622 
Rorke's Drift, 711 
Roosbeke, 319 
Rosbach, 511 

Sadowa. See Koniggratz 
St. Albans, first, 310; 

second, 311 
St. Eustache, 722 
St. Gothard, 488 
St. Jacques (St. Jacob), 334 
St. Jean d'Acre (siege), 545 
St. Pierre, 560 
St. Quentin, first, 421 ; 

second, 602 
St. Vincent, first, 534; 

second, 549 
Salamanca, 560 
Salamis, 96 

Salamis in Cyprus, 100 
San Sebastian (siege), 560 
Saragossa (siege), 559 
Saratoga, 534 
Sauchieburn, 315 
Sebastopol (siege), 622, 
Sedan, 600 
Sellasia, 115 
Sempach, 333 
Ssnef, 488 

Senlac (or Hastings) 
Sentinum, 136 
Seringapatam (siege), 5 
ShannonandChesapeake,72g 



Index 



771 



Battles (continued) 1 . — 

Shiloh, 743 

Shrewsbury, 308 

Silistria, 243 

Silistria (siege), 640 

Slivnitza, 642 

Sluys, 303 

Sobraon, 671 

Solferino, 625 

Solway Moss, 413 

Staffarde, 493 

Stamford Bridge, 226 

Standard, The (Northaller- 
ton), 268 

Steinkirk, 493 

Stirling Bridge, 300 

Stralsund (siege), 452 

Syracuse (siege), 141 

Talavera, 559 

Talikot, 656 

Tamanieh, 695 

Tamasi, 696 

Tannenberg, 336 

Tchernaya (Traktir 
Bridge), 622 

Tel-el-Kebir, 691 

Tewkesbury, 131 

Thapsus, 155 

Thermopylae, 96 

Ticinus, 140 

Tinchebrai, 267 

Torgau, 512 

Toulouse, 561 

Tours, 210 

Towton, 312 

Trafalgar, 556 

Trasimene Lake, 140 

Trebbia, The, 140 

Tyre (siege), 44 

Vadimonian Lake, first, 
135 ; second, 136 

Val-es-dunes, 225 

Valmy, 540 

Varaville, 226 

Veii (siege), 134 

Vercellas (Vercelli), 149 

Verona, 180 

Vienna (siege), 501 

Vimiera, 559 

Villa Viciosa, 488 

Vinegar Hill, 552 

Vionville, 600 

Vittoria, 560 

Wagram, 561 

Waterloo, 565 

Weissenberg, 451 

Weissenburg, 600 

Wilderness (U.S.), 742 

Worcester, 475 

Worth, 600 

Xeres de la Frontera, 209 

Yorktown, 534 

Zama, 142 

Zenta, 501 

Zorndorf, 511 

Zutphen, 444 
Bavaria, Bavarians, 212, 231, 

288, 509, SSS, 567, 599. 609, 

610, 61 t 
Bayard, Chevalier de, 390, 404 
Bayeux, 217 
Bayezid (Bajazel), 358 
Bazaine, Marshal, 600 
Beaconsfield, Lord (Benjamin 

Disraeli), 675 
Beaton, Cardinal, 414, 415 



Beaufort, Cardinal, 309 

Beauharnais, Eugene, 554, 561 

Beauharnois, Marquis de, 519 

Beauregard, General, 740 

Bee, 369 

Bee, Abbey of, 226 

Bechuanaland, British, 712 

Bechuanas, 709 

Becket, Thomas, 269 

Bedford, Duke of, 309, 321, 323 

Behar, 656, 661, 674 

Behring Sea Arbitration, 733 

Belfast, 5s r, 592 

Belgium, 317, 566, 569, 615, 616 

Belgrade, 328, 361 

Belisarius, 181, 185 

Belize, 752 

Belshazzar, 20, 54 

Beluchistan, 679 

Ben Musa, 239 

Benbow, 404 

Benedek, General, 609 

Benedict, St., 263 

Benedict XIV., Pope, 532 

Benedictines, 263 

Bengal, 657, 658, 659, 660, 661, 

656, 66 4, 673, 674 
Benin, Capture of, 705 
Benin coast, 701 
Benin massacre, 705 
Benito, Juarez, of Mexico, 

747. 748 
Bentham, Jeremy. 583 
Bentinck, Lord William, 668 
Berar, 658 
Berber, Berbers, 207, 209, 236, 

240 ; 241, 696 
Berbice, 759 

Berengaria of Navarre, 252 
Beresford, Marshal, 559, 620, 

7S4 
Berezina, Passage of, 562 
Bergen, 364 

herlaimont, Count de, 437, 438 
Berlin, 511, 512, 513, 556 
Berlin, Congress of, 641 
Berlin Decree, 557 
Bermudas, 751 
Bern, 334, 615 

Bernadotte, Marshal, 568, 618 
Bernard, St., 251 
Bernard of Clairvaux, 258 
Bernard Palissy, 422 
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, 

454. 455. 456 
Bertha, 202 

Bertrand du Guesclin, 304 
Berwick, 300 

Berwick, Duke of, 492, 494 
Berytus (Beyrout), 39, 41, 255 
Bessarion, 370 
Bhonslas of Nagpur, 658 
Bida, 734 
Biscay, 210, 240 
Bismarck, Prince, 598, 599, 

609, 610, 613 
Bithynia, 50, 113, 150, 286 
"Black Death," The, 303, 369 
Black Friars, 264. See Domi- 
nicans 
"Black Prince," The, 261, 304 
Blake, Admiral, 475 
B'anche of Castile, 282 
"Bkod-bath of Stockholm," 

419 
Bliicher, Marshal, 564, 565 



Boabdil, 346, 347 
Boadicea, 192 
Board of Admiralty, 394 
Board of Control (India), 663, 

674 
Board Schools (British Isles), 
T 584 

Boccaccio, 368, 370, 373 
Bceotia, 71, 97 
Boeotian League, 108 
Boers, 715 

Boers, Dutch, at Cape, 710 
Boethius, 180 
Bohemia, Bohemians, 230, 288, 

2 9°. 335. 337. 4 50, 45 1 . 45 2 , 

508, 509, 510, 607 
Bohemond of Tarentum, 250 
Bokhara, 238, 355, 356, 637,656 
Bolivia, 753, 754 
Bologna, 294, 368, 375 
Bombay, 659, 660, 673 
Bonaparte, Jerome, 557 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 554, 556, 

559 
Bonaparte, Louis, 554, 556, 

59 6 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 545,546, 

552, 553, 75° 
Bonaventura, St., 264, 369 
Boniface, Marquis of Mont- 

ferrat, 253, 286 
Boniface, St., 183 
Boniface VIII., Pope, 320, 337 
Bonn, 492 

Bonner, Bishopof London, 411 
Book of Discipline, Second 

(Scotland), 417 
Bordeaux, 209, 323, 561, 601, 603 
Borgia, Cesare, 390 
Borgu, 704 
Borneo, 684 
Borsippa, 19, 27 
Boscawen, Admiral, 522 
Bosnia, 361, 614, 639, 641 
Bossuet, 484, 532 
Boston (Massachusetts), 518, 

522, 533 
Botany Bay, 761 
Botticelli, 372 
Bouftlers, Marshal, 493 
Boulogne, 554, 555 
Bourbaki, General, 602, 603 
Bourbon, Anton de, of Na 

varre, 422, 423 
Bourbon, Cardinal de, 426 
Bourbon, Constable, 392, 405 
Bourbon, House of, 426, 533, 

567 
Bourdaloue, 484 
Bourgeoisie, The (France), 324 
Boyer, President of Haiti, 750 
Brabant, 319, 438, 448 
Braddock, General, 520 
Bradwardine, Archbishop, 369 
Braganza, House of, 465 
Bragg, General, 742 
Brahmans, 654, 655 
Brandenburg, 455, 457, 498 
Brandenburg, Elector 0^497 
Brandenburg, House of, 450 
Brandt, Sebastian, 374 
Brasidas, 82, 102 
Brazil, 379, 558, 755, 756, 757, 

758 
Breda, 445, 418 
Brederode, De, 438 



it 



Index 



Bremen, 364, 366, 562, 566, 610, 
611 

Bresiau, 511 

Brest, 485, 549 

Bretons, 212 

Brian Boroimhe (Brian Boru), 
227, 228 

Bridge of Sighs, 340 

Brigantes, The, 192 

Brill (Briel), 240 

Bristol, 579 

Britain, Ancient, 49, 166, 192, 
193 

Britain, Great, 498, 510, 534, 
54', 545. 553. 554. 556, 558, 
561, 562, 566, 569, 573, 598, 
616, 630, 637, 640, 643, 649, 
651, 680, 681, 684, 688, 690, 
701, 702, 730, 733, 734, 739, 
745. 748. 753. 762. 763 

British Central Africa Pro- 
tectorate, 713 

British Columbia, 724, 726 

British Isles, 191, 392, 459, 475, 
547. 577 

British North America Act, 
724 

British South Africa Com- 
pany, 712, 713 

Brittany, 218, 226 

Brock, Sir Isaac, 721 

Brooke, Sir James, 684 

Brougham, Lord, 578 

Brown, Marshal, 510 

Brown's, John, raid, 738 

Bruce, Edward (bi other of 
Robert Bruce), 315 

Bruce, James, 699 

Eruce, Robert, 300 

Bruges, 318, 319, 320, 364 

Brumaire i&ti'i (trance), 545 

Brundusium (Brindisi), 132 

Brunei, Sultan of, 684 

Bruno, Leonardo, 370 

Brunswick, 288, 510, 557, 606, 
610 

Brunswick, Duke of, 540 

Brunswick, House of, 480 

Brusa (Broussa), 356, 358, 359 

Brussels, 439, 441, 444 

Bruttii, 124, 136 

Brutus, 156, 157 

Buccaneers, The, 749 

Buchanan, George, 372 

Buchanan, James, President, 
738 

Buda or Buda-Pesth, 327, 329, 
470, 501, 607 

Buddhism, 645, 650, 682 

Buenos Ayres, 754, 755 

Bulawayo, 713, 714 

Bulgaria, Bulgarians, 208, 242, 
286, 355, 358, 569, 639, 641, 
642, 643 

Bundelkhand, 674 

Burgoyne, General, 534 

Burgundy, Burgundians, 169, 
174, 177. 190, 214, 332 

Burgundy, Duke of (grandson 
of Louis XIV.), 493, 497 

Burgundy, Kingdom ol, 290 

Burhampoor, 665 

Burial Laws Amendment Act, 
582 

Burma, 655, 667 

Burma, Upper, 676 



Burnaby, Colonel, 695 

Burton, Captain, 700 

Bury St. Edmunds, 219 

Bushire, 680 

Bushmen, 709 

Bute, Lord, 512 

Butlers, The (Earls of Or- 
mond, Ireland), 395 

Butt, Isaac, 588 

Byblus, 40, 44 

Byron, Lord, 627, 628 

Byzantine (or Greek) Empire, 
179, 180, 183, 18S, 283, 287 

Byzantium (see also Constan- 
tinople), 173, J 78 



Cabots, The, 379 

Cabral, 353, 757 

Caceres, General (of Peru), 

754 
Cade's, Jack, rising, 309 
Cadiz, 41, 436, 549, 555, 619 
Cadmus, 72 
Caen, 309 

Caerleol (Carlisle), 197 
Caernarvon, 299 
Caesar, Julius, 154, 155, 156 263 
Caesarea, 36 
Cairo, 238, 356, 545, 546, 687, 

688, 691 
Cajetan, 400 
Calabria, 124 
Calais, 303 

Calcutta, 660, 665, 673, 677 
Calder, Sir Rooert, 555 
Caledonians, 200 
Calhoun, John C, 739 
Calicut, 387 
California, 384, 737 
Caligula, 37, 164 
Caliphs (or Khalifs, Califs), 

206 
Callao Castle, 757 
Callimachus, 90, 91, 92, 94 
Calmar, Union of, 419 
Calonne, 527 
Calvert, Sir George (Lord 

Baltimore), 727 
Calvin, Calvinists, 409, 412, 

414, 428, 432, 438, 446, 447, 

467 
Camalodunum, 192, 194 
Cambodia, 681 
Cambray, League of, 390 
Cambridge, 368 
Cambyses, 45, 51, 55 
Cameron, Captain, 698 
Cameroons, The, 701 
Camisards, 491 
Camoens, 352, 387 
Campania, 124 
Campbell, General, 667 
Campbell, Sir Colin (Lord 

Clyde), 674 
Canaanites, 29 
Canada, 513, 518, 519, 524, 574, 

720, 721-726, 730 
Canadian Pacific Railwav, 725 
Canadians, French, 722, 723 
Canary Islands, 353, 719 
Candia. See Crete 
Canning, George, 558, 629, 734 
Canning, Lord, 673, 674 



Canossa, 235 

Canovas del Castillo, 619 
Canrobert, 693 
Canterbury, 219, 266 
Canton, 647, 648, 649 
Canute. See Cnut 
Cape Breton Island, 514, 519, 
, 522, 564 

Cape Coast Castle, 354, 702, 703 
Cape Colony, 709, 71 1, 712, 715 
Cape of Good Hope, 354 
Cape Town, 710, 711 
Cape Verd Isles, 719 
Capet, Hugh, 218 
Capetian dynasty, 218 
Cappadocia, 151 
Capreas (Capri), 163 
Capua, 132, 140, 141, 624 
Caracalla, 68, 168 
Caracas, 753 

Caradoc (Caractacus). 192 
Carbonari, The (Italy), 621 
Caria, 73 
Caribbean Sea ("Spanish 

Main "), 749 
Carinthia, 330, 331, 332 
Carleton, Sir Guy (Lord 

Dorchester), 721 
Carlos, Don (Spain), 618, 619 
Carnatic, The, 663 
Carniola, 330, 332 
Carnot, 541, 543 
Carolina, North and South, 

5'7, 739, 742, 743 
Caroline, Queen (wife of 

George IV.), 578 
Carolingian (or Carlovingian) 

dynasty, 191 
Carrington, Sir Frederick, 713 
Carrhae, 63 
Carthage, Carthaginians, 41, 

44, 49, !38, 139, Mi, 142, 143, 

146, 177 
Carthusians, 263 
Carder, Jacques, 514 
Casimirs of Poland, 326, 467 
Cassander, 114 
Cassiodorus, 180 
Cassiterides, The, 41 
Cassius, 156, 157 
Castile, 240, 283, 342, 462 
Castilla, Ramon, of Peru, 754 
Ca tharine of Bragan 7.8,465, 659 
Catharine II. of Russia, 505, 

513 
Cathcart, Sir George, 711 
Catholic Association (Ire- 
land), 586 
Catholic Emancipation Act 

581 
Catholic League, 450, 452 
Catholic Reaction. The, 430 
•'Catholics, Old," 626 
Catiline, 153 
Catinat, 493, 495 
Catoof Utica, 153, 155 
Cato Street Conspiracy, 578 
Cato the Censor, 143 
Catulus, 149 
Caucasian race, 1,3 
Caucasus, The, 633 
Caudine Forks, 135 
Cavalier, Jean, 491, 492 
Cavalier, Robert, 516 
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 



Ind 



ex 



US 



Cavour, Count, 622, 624 

Cawnpore, Massacres of, 674 

Caxton, 375 

Cayenne, 759, 760 

Cecrops, 72 

Celts, 67, 70. See Kelts 

Cenemagni (or Iceni), 191 

Censors, Census (Rome;, 126 

Cerameicus (Athens), 93 

Cerdic, 202 

Cervantes, 473 

Cetewayo, 711, 715 

Ceuta, 694 

Ceylon, 552, 654, 655, 659, 682 

Chad, St. (Ceadda), 201 

Chaka (Zulu chief), 714 

Chalcis, 87 

Chaldaea, Chaldaeans, 16, 17, 

21-23 
Chalmers, Dr., 593 
Chamillart, 495, 496 
Champiain, Lake, 519, 523 
Champlain, Samuelde, 515, 516 
Chandernagore, 659, 662 
Chandra-gupta, 655 
Channel Islands, 270 
Chanzy, General, 601, 602 
Chateau Gaillard, 270 
Charles, Archduke, of Austria, 

543. 544. 545. 5*i 
Charles the Bald, 214, 217 
Charles the Bold of Bur- 
gundy, 313, 320, 324, 334 
Charles I. of England, 448, 

459. 460, 461, 516 
Charles II. of England, 46s, 

475. 476, 487. 5'8 
Charles IV. of France, 321 
Charles VI. of France, 309, 

319. 34i 
Charles VII. of trance, 321, 

323 
Charles VIII. of France, 324, 

389 
Charles IX. of France, 421 
Charles X. of France, 594 
Charles Albert of Germany, 

509 
Charles IV. of Germany, 330 
Charles V. of Germany, 258, 

380, 384, 391, 392, 401-408, 410, 

422, 433-435, 45o, 47°, 471. 

691, 692 
Charles VI., 496, 502 
Charles, Prince, of Hohen- 

zollern, 640 
Charles I. of Portugal, 620 
Charles, Prince, of Koumania, 

642 
Charles Albert of Sardinia, 

621 
Charles Emmanuel I. of Savoy , 

466 
Charles II. of Spain, 494 
Charles III. of Spain, 528 
Charles IV. of Spain, 558 
Charles IX. of Sweden, 421 
Charles X. of Sweden, 498 
Charles XI. of Sweden, 498 
Charles XII. of Sweden, 49 

500 
Charles XIII. of Sweden, 568 
Charles XIV. of Sweden, 618 
Charles Martel, 191 
Charles the Simple, 217 
Charleston (U.S.), 737, 743 

51 



" Charlie, Bonnie Prince," 480 
Charlotte, Princess, 578 
Charter, Great (Magna 

Cliarta), 272^ 273, 301 
Chartres, Fort (North 

America), 720 
Chatti, The, 160 
Chaucer, 306, 374 
Chaumette, 543 
Cherbourg, 323 
Cherusci, The, 162 
Chicago, 745 

Chichester, Sir Arthur, 460 
Chili, 753, 754. 757 
China, Chinese, 355, 644, 645, 

646, 648, 649, 655, 686 
Chios, 628 
Chivalry, 260, 261 
Chlodovech (Chlodwig or 

Clovis), 189, 190 
Choiseul, Due de, 526 
Chosroes I. of Persia, 677 
Chosroes II. of Persia, 678 
Christian of Brunswick, 451 

45 2 
Christian I. of Denmark, 419 
Christian II. of Denmark, 419 
Christian III. of Denmark, 470 
Christian IV. of Denmark, 

451, 452. 5°° 
Christian IX. of Denmark, 617 
Christian of Oldenburg, 419 
Christianity, Ancient, 164, 165, 

167, 170, 171 193 
Christianity, Introduction of, 

into Britain, 198; in Scot- 
land, 201 
Christianity in Bohemia, 335 ; 

in Russia, 325 
Christina, Queen, of Spain, 

619 
Christina, Queen, of Sweden, 

498 
Christophe, Henri, of Haiti, 

750 
Chulalongkorn I. of Siam. 681 
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 676 
Church-rates, 581 
Cicero, 153, 154, 157 
Cid, The (Spain), 241 
Cilicia, 150, 151, 153, 154 
Cimbri, The, 148, 149 
Cimmerians, The, 50 
Cinna, 151 

Cintra, Convention of, 559 
Circassians, 505 
Cisalpine Gaul, 132, 139, 140 
Cisalpine Republic, 544, 546 
Cistercians, 263 
Clan-na-Gael, The, 589 
Clarence, Duke of (brother of 

Edward IV.), 313 
Clarendon, Assize of, 268 
Clarendon, Constitutions of, 

269 
Clarkson, Thomas, 567 
Claudius, Emperor, 36, 164 
Claudius Nero, Consul, 141 
Claverhouse, Graham of 

(Viscount Dundee), 476, 477, 

478 
Clay, Henry (U.S.), 736 
Cleisthenes, 87 
Clement IV., Pope, 292 
Clement V., Pope, 259, 320, 

337, 339 



Clement VII., Pope, 405, 406, 

407, 410 
Clement XL, Pope, 532 
Clement XIII., Pope, 532 
Clement XIV., Pope, 532 
Cleombrotus, 108 
Cleomenes, 115 
Cleon, 182, 183 
Cleopatra, 155 
Cleveland, President (U.S.) 

747 
Clive, Robert, Lord, 66i 
Clothild, 190 
Clovis. See Chlodovech 
Clugny (or Cluni), 249, 263 
Cnidus, 73 
Cnut (Canute), 223, 224, 229, 

230 
Coalition, Second, against 

Napoleon, 545 ; Third, 554 ; 

Fifth, 561 ; Sixth, 562 
Cochin-China, 686 
Cochrane, Lord (Earl of Duu- 

donald), 567, 753, 757 
Code Napoleon, The, 539, 553 
Coercion Acts (Ireland), 590, 

59i 
Cohorn (military engineer), 

493 
Coimbra, 351 
Colbert, 484, 485, 489, 516 
Colborne, Sir John, 722 
Colenso, Dr., 715 
Colet, Dean, 371, 394, 410 
Coligny, Admiral, 422, 423, 

424, 5*4 
Collingwood, Lord, 549, 555 
Collot d'Herbois, 541 
Cologne, 290, 363, 365, 375 
Colombo, 682, 683 
Colonnas, The, 295 
Colosseum (Rome), 165 
Columba, St., 199, 2ji 
Columban, St., 182 
Columbia, 743, 753 
Columbus, 377, 378, 379, 749, 

752 
Combermere, Lord,TjC8 
Comines, Philippe de, 374 
Comitia Centuriata (Rome), 

126, 127, 129 
Comitia Tributa (Rome), 127, 

128, 129, 144, 146 
Committee of Public Safety 

(France), 541, 542 
Commodus, Emperor, 167, 168 
Commons, House of, 273, 274, 

311, 478, 480, 550, 579, 580 
Commune, The (Paris), 603 
Concordat (Austria), 614 
Conde, Prince de, 423, 456, 

487, 488 
Condorcet, 536 
Confederate States (America), 

586, 732, 735, 738, 739, 741, 

742. 745 
Confederation, North Ger- 
man, 610, 611 
Confederation of the Rhine, 

555 
Confession of Faith (Scotland), 

417 
Confirmation of the Charters, 

301 
Confucius, 644, 645 
Congo, 700 



774 



Index 



Congo Free (or Independent) 

State, 701, 716 
Connaught, 200, 227, 228, 315 
Connecticut, 517 
Conon, 107 

Conrad II. of Germany, 233 
Conrad 111. of Germany, 251, 

287 
Conrad of Sicily, 292 
Conradin of Sicily, 292 
Constance, Council of, 307, 

33 1 . 335. ^38 
Constans II., Emperor, 207 
Constantine the Great, 172, 

!73i 175 
Constantine IV., 207 
Constantine V., 242 
Constantine VI., 242 
Constantine XI., 360 
Constantine (last Greek em- 
peror), 361 
Const' itine, Grand Duke, of 

Russia, 631, 633 
Constantinople, 173, 175, 181, 

186, 188, 207, 208, 230, 284, 

285, 286, 325, 338, 340, 356, 

3S-> 361- See Byzantium 
Constitutional Act (Canada), 

721 
Consulares (Rome), 126 
Consulate (France), 545 
" Continental System," 557, 

558, 561, 562 
Conventions. See Treaties 
Conway (Wales), 299 
Cook, Captain, 523, 726, 760, 

762, 763 
Co-operation, 573, 574 
Coote, Sir Eyre, 660, 662, 663 
Copenhagen, 364, 365 
Cora'is (Koraes), 627 
Corbulo, 65 

Corcyra (Cot/n), 80, 101 
Cordova, 211, 236, 237, 238, 

240, 283 
Corfinium, 150 
Corinth, 71, 73,8^,83,104, no, 



Corn Laws, 591 

Corneille, 484 

Cornwallis, Lord, 534, 663, 664 

Coromandel (India), 659 

Corporation and Test Acts, 

481, 581 
Corsairs, Barbary.348,472, 531 
Corsica, 49, 139, 526, 531 
Cortereal, 379 
Cortes, Hernando, 380, 381- 

384, 4°7 
Cosimo (Cosmo) de Medici, 296 
Cossacks of the Ukraine, 467, 

468, 469 
Costa Rica, 753 
Cotton Famine, The, 586 
Council of Ten (Venice), 339, 

34o, S3i 
Couthon, 541, 543 
Covenant, First (Scotland), 

416 
Covenanters (Scotland), 477 
Cranmer, 411 

Crassus, 62, 63, 64, 153, 154 
Cremona, 139 
Crete, 71, 73, 153, 242, 258, 285, 

488, 529, 530, 630 



Crimea, 362, 505 

Croatia, 355, 608, 613 

Crcesus, 51 

Cromer, Lord (Sir Evelyn 

Baring), 691 
Cromwell, Oliver, 460,475, 484, 

684 
Cromwell, Thomas (Earl of 

Essex), 410 
Crotnwellian Settlement, The 

(Ireland), 476 
Croton (Crotona), 125 
Crown Point (U.S.), 520, 523, 

534 
Crowther, Bishop, 704 
Crusades, 248-261 ; First, 251 ; 

Second, 251 ; Third, 251, 

253, 258 ; Fourth, 253, 255, 

284; Fifth. 253; Sixth, 254; 

Seventh, 254 
Ctesiphon, 61, 66, 67, 68 
Cuba, 483, 525, 746, 749 
Cumberland, 222 
Cumberland, Duke of (son of 

George II.), 480, 510 
Cumberland, Duke of (son of 

George III.), 606 
Cumbria, 196, 197 
Cunobelin, 192 
Curius Dentatus, 137 
Cushites (Hamites), 17 
Cuthbert, St., 201, 202 
Cut tack, 666 
Cuzco, 385 
Cybele, 49, 52, 75 
Cyme, 73 
Cyprus, 41, 58, 71, 252, 257, 258, 

284, 342, 473 
Cyrene, 45, 73 
Cyrus the Great, 20, 32, 51, 

53. 55 
Cyrus the "\ ounger, 58 
Cythera, 102 

Czartoryski, Prince Adam, 633 
Czechs, The, 230, 335 



Dacca, 660 

Dacia, 66, 165, 169, 174, 175 

Dahomey, 706, 707, 709 

Daimios (Japan), 651, 652 

Dalecarlia, 317, 420 

Dalhousie, Earl of (Canada), 
722 

Dalhousie, Lord (India), 671, 
672, 673 

Dalmatia, 355, 566 

Dalriada, 200 

Damascus, 24 

Damietta, 254 

Damnonia, 192, 196 

Dampier, 760 

Dandolo, Henry (Doge), 253, 
285 

Danegeld, 223 

Danelagh, 220, 223 

Danes (or Northmen, Norse- 
men), 200, 201, 203, 212, 219, 
220, 221, 222, 227, 228 

Dante, 373 

Danton, 538, 540, 541, 543 

Danzig, 364, 566 

Dardanelles, 640 

Darfur, 690, 69s 



Darien, Isthmus of, 379, 515 
Darius I. of Persia, 55 58, 88, 

89 
Darius II. (Nothus), 58 
Darius III. (Codomanus), 58, 

in, 112 
" Dark Ages," 179 
Darnley, Lord, 417 
Datis, 57, 88, 91, 92 
Daun, Marshal, 510-513 
David, King of Israel, 12, 30 
David I. of Scotland, 275 
David II. of Scotland, 303 
David, St;, 202 
Davis, Jefferson, 738, 744 
Davout, Marshal, 554, 556 
De Burghs (Burkes), 315 
De Ruyter, 487, 488 
Deak, Francis, 607 
Deccan (India), 657, 658 
Decebalus, 165 
Decelea, 105, io&- 
Decemviri (Korae), 128 
Decius, 168 
Decius Mus, 136 
Declaration of Independence 

(U S.), 534 
Declarations of Indulgence. 

477 
Deioces, 53 
Delatores (Rome), 163 
Delaware, 516 
Delft, 443 

Delhi, 656, 657, 658, 666, 675 
Del os, 98, 99 

Delos, Confederacy of, 98 
Delphi, and Oracle of, 76, 78, 

97, ii7 
Demeter, 75 

Democracy, Modern, 572-574 
Democrats (U.S.), 737 
Demosthenes (Athenian 

general), 105 
Demosth- nes (the orator), 

109, no, 114, 121 
D'r nghien, Due, 554 
Denman, Lord, 578 
Denmark, 229, 26, 317, 419, 

420, 498, 500, 549, 558, 568, 

573. 574, 609, 616, 617 
Derby, 579 

Dervishes (Sudan), 696 
Desiderius, Kiner, 183, 212 
Desmond, Earl of, 41 S 
Desmond faction (Ireland), 

418 
Desir.oulins, Camille, 538, 543 
Despensers, The, 302 
Dessalines, J. J., 750, 751 
Dewey, George, 748 
Dhulip Singh, 671, 672 
Diadochi, The, 114 
Diaz de Solis, 379 
Diaz, President (Mexico), 748 
Dictator (Rome), 126 
Diderot, 536 
Diebitsch, Marshal, 639 
Dieppe, 602 

Dingaan (Zulu chief), 715 
Diniz (Denis), King of Por- 
tugal, 351, 462 
Diniz Diaz, navigator, of 

Portugal, 354 
Diocletian, Emperor, 170-172 
Dionysos, Dionvsia, 75 
Dionysius of Syracuse, 46 



Index 



775 



Directory, The (France), 543- 

545 
Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord 

Beaconsfield), 675 
Dmitri, The false, of Russia, 

468 
Dodds, General, 707, 708 
Dodona Oracle, 78 
Domesday Book, 266 
Dominic, St., 264, 281 
Dominican Order, 264, 282 
Domitian, Emperor, 165, 193 
Donelson, Fort, 740 
Dongolo, 695, 6q6 
Doria, Andrea, of Genoa, 406, 

407 
Dorians, Dorian migration, 72, 

73, 74, 80 
Dort, Synod of, 447 
Douai, 486 
Douglas, Earl, 314 
Douglases, The (Scotland), 413 
Dozsa, George, 469 
Dragonnades, The (France), 

490 
Dragut, 258 
Drake, 449, 5-5, 726 
"Dred-Scottcase" (U.S.), 738 
Drogheda, 476 
Drogheda, Statute of, 395 
Druidism, 192 

Drusus (Roman tribune), 149 
Dryburgh, 413 
Du Guesclin, 321 
Dual Control (Egypt), 690 
Dublin, 200, 274 
Dubois, Cardinal, 525 
Dufferin, Lord, 676, 724 
Duilius, 138 
Dumbarton, 199 
Dunbar, 300 
Duncan, Admiral, 549 
Dundee, 476 
Dunedin, 201 
Dunkeld, 201 
Dunkirk, 484. 497 
Dunois, 321, 322 
Duns Scotus, 264, 369 
Dunstan, 222 
Dupleix, 660 
Duquesne, 485, 488, 523 
Duquesne, Fort, 520, 522 
Durban, 715 
D'Urban, Sir Benjamin, 710, 

711 
Durham, Earl of, 723 
Dur-Sharrukin, 25 
Dur-Yakin, 25 
Dutch, The, 682, 683, 684, 686, 

702, 7c 9 
Dyrrhachium, 155 



Ealdorman, 222 

East India Company, 647,659, 

660, 661, 663, 665, 666, 673, 

674, 719 
Easto lings, 363 
Eastern (Greek) Empire, 242, 

678, 687 
" Eastern Question," 255, 425, 

505, 639, 642 
Eboracum (York), 168, 172, 194 
Eccelino, 295 



Ecclesia (Athens), 85, ic6 

Eck, 403 

Ecuador, 753 

Edessa, 251 

Edgar, King, 222' 

Edgar the yEtheling, 225, 226 

"Edict of Restitution, 452, 

454, 455 
Edinburgh, 2:1, 227, 275, 300, 

476 
Edmund the Elder, 221 
Edmund " Ironside," 223 
Edmund, King of East Anglia, 

219 
Edward the Black Prince, 303 
Edward the Confessor, 224- 

226 
Edward, Prince (son of Henry 

VI.), 310 
Edward, Duke of Kent, 578 
Edward the Elder, 221 
Edward I. of England, 255, 

273, 298-301 
Edward II. of England, 273, 

299, 301, 302 
Edward III. of England, 274, 

3°i, 3°3. 304, 3 C 8, 316, 363 
Edward IV. of England, 313, 

3", 313 
Edward V. of England, 313 
Edward VI. of England, 411, 

413, 416 
Edwin of Northumbria, 197, 

201 
Egbert, 198, 202, 203 
Egesta, 46 
Eginhard, 213 

Egmount, Count, 437, 438, 439 
Egypt, Egyptians, 6-16, 33, 45, 
58, 113, .158, 471, 544. 546, 
687, 691, 694, 695, 696, 699 
Eira, 83 

Elagabalus, Emperor, 168 
Elatn, 27 
Elamites, 19 
Elba, 49, 553, 564 
Electors ol Germany, 330 
Electricity, 570 
Elerin, Lord, 651, 674 
Elgin, Lord (another), 677, 723 
Elijah, 40 

Eliott, General (Lord Heath- 
field), 535 
Elis, 71, 83 
Elizabeth, daughter of James 

I . 45i 
Elizabeth of York, 314 
Elizabeth, Queen, of England, 
312, 412, 416, 425, 429, 436, 
439- 441, 442, 444. 447 
Elizabeth ot Russia, 505, 512 
Ellenborough, Lord, 669 
Elmina, 354, 702, 703 
El-Obeyd, 695 
Ely, 219 

Emancipation Act, 586 
Emigre's (France), 540, 553, 564 
Emmanuel (Manoel) " the 
Fortunate " of Portugal, 462 
Encumbered Estates Act (Ire- 
land), 591 
Encyclopedic, Encyclope- 

distes, 536 
Engilenheim flngelheim), 212 
England, 195, i y 6, 321, 437, 439, 
449, 45°, 465, 487, 494, 5<J9 



English Pale (Ireland), 275 

Eorlas (Earls), 195 

Epaminondas, 107, 108, 109 

Ephesus, 51, 73, 175, 182 

Ephialtes, 99 

Ephors (Sparta), 81, 115 

Epictetus, 12:, 

Epicurean school, 119 

Epicurus, 119 

Epirus, 71, 74, 78, 150, 155, 630 

Eqitilcs (Rome), 126 

Erasmus, 371, 372, 394 

Erech, 19 

Eretria, 88 

Eric II. of Denmark, 364 

Eridhu, 18 

Erie, Lake, 722 

Erik IX. oi Sweden, 277 

Ertoghrul, 356 

Esarhaddon, 13, 26, 43 

Essex, Earl of (Elizabeth's 
reign), 419 

Este, House of, 295 

Ethelbert of Kent, 197, 202 

Ethelflaed (Lady of Mercia), 
221 

Ethelred I. of England, 219 

Ethelred II. of England, 223 

Ethiopic race, 1, 2-10 

Etruria, Etruscans, 45, 48, 124, 
125, 134, 135, 136, 140 

Eubcea, 100, ic6 

Euclid, 113 

Eugene, Prince, 497, 501, 502 

Eugenius IV., Pope, 359 

Eapatridac (Athens), 84 

Euphrates, 62 

Euripides, 97 

Eurotas, 80 

Exarch, 181 

Exhibitions, Great (1851, 1862), 
584- 586 

Exhibitions, Indian and Colo- 
nial, 585 

Exmouth, Lord, 577, 691, 692 

Eyre, Governor (Jamaica), 751 

Ezekiel, 32 

Ezion-geber, 42 

Ezra, 33 
Ez-Zaghal, 345, 346 

P. 

Fabius Maximus, 140 
Faidherbe, General, 601, 602, 

706 
"talk laws," I he (Prussia), 

611 
" Family Compact " (Canada), 

722 
Fantis (West Africa), 7-2 
Farnese, Alexander, Prince 

of Parma, 442 
Faroe Islands, 216, 229 
farragut, Admiral, 741, 742 
Fatima Caliphs, 687 
Federal (Northern) States and 

" Federals " (America), 586, 

732, 738-741, 743 
1'enelon, 484 
Fenians, 587 
Ferdinand of Aragon (Spain), 

343-347, 378, 39 3 
Ferdinand I. ot Austria, 6c6 
Ferdinand, Prince, of Bruns- 
wick, 510, 511, 512, 513 



77 6 



Index 



Ferdinand, Prince, ol Bul- 
garia, 642 
Ferdinand II., Emperor, of 

Germany, 450-452. 454-456 
Ferdinand 111., Emperor, of 

Germany, 456 
Ferdinand II. of Naples, 621- 

623 
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, 620 
Ferdinand VI. of Spain, 528 
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, 564, 

594, 618 
Fernando III. of Leon, 283 
Fernando Po, 354 
Ferrara, 295 
Feudal system, 179, 262, 304, 

367 
Fichte (philosopher), 563 
Field, Cyrus W. (U. S.), 745 
Fiesole, 245 

Fillmore, President, 737 
Fingos The, 709, 710 
Finland, 500, 505, 568, 636 
First Fleet, The (Australia), 

761 
Fisher, Bishop, of Rochester, 

410 
Fisher, Fort (U.S.), 742 
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 551 
Fitzmaurice, Sir James, 418 
Five Articles of Perth, 418 
" Five Boroughs," The, 221 
" Five Members," The, 460 
Flamininus, Consul (Rome), 

116, 140 
Flanders, 256, 318, 319, 438, 

486, 495 
Flavian Emperors(Rome), 165 
Flemings, The, 319, 437 
Fleury, Cardinal, 525 
Flood, Henry (Ireland), 551 
Florence, 245, 294, 296, 297, 

37°, 373, 375. 389, 39 1 . 4°6, 

407, 624, 625 
Floies, General (Uruguay), 

756 
Florida, 379, 525, 534, 535, 734, 

735, 739 
Flushing, 567 
Fonseca, President, of Brazil, 

758 
Foote, Commodore (U.S.), 740 
Formosa, 649, 653 
Forunij The (Rome), 128 
Foscari, Francesco (Doge), 341 
Four Articles, The (France), 

532 
Fox, Charles James, 551, 568 
France, 280, 281, 293, 309, 314, 
320, 321, 334, 421, 457, 483, 
496, 513, 532, 534, 540, 545, 
549, 552, 554, 557, 561, 565, 
5 6 9, 574, 603, 605, 629, 648, 
649, 652, 6»6, 690, 701, 702, 
706, 728, 739, 748, 762, 763 
Franche Comie (Burgundy), 

2 9°, 332, 408, 486, 488 
Francia, Dr., of Paraguay, 756 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 263 
Francis, Sir Philip, 661 
Francis Xavier, 430 
Francis I. of Austria, 540, 555, 

606 
Francis I. of France, 391, 402, 
404 405, 406, 407, 413, 466, 
47o, 514 



Francis II. of France, 414, 

416, 421 
Francis Joseph, Emperor of 

Austria, 607, 613 
Francis Joseph of Lorraine, 

Emperor of German}', 508 
Francis II. of Naples, 623 
Franciscans, 263, 264 
Frankfurt-on-the-Muin, 330, 

566, 610 
Franks, The, 169, 173, 174, 176, 

189, 332 
Fravartish (Phraortes), 27 
F'rederick III. of Denmark, 

501 
Frederick VII. of Denmark, 

617 
Frederick I. ("Barbarossa ") 

of Germany, 252, 276, 288, 

289, 294, 364 
Frederick II. of German}*, 

253, 290, 291, 292, 332, 364 
Frederick II I. of Germany, 

329. 33' 
Frederick III. of Germany 

(the new Empire), 612 
Frederick Charles, Prince of 

Prussia, 602 
Frederick Henry, Prince of 

Nassau, 449 
Frederick I. of Prussia, 508 
Frederick II. of Prussia (the 

Great), 507-512 
Frederick William of Bran- 
denburg (the "Great 

Elector '), 499, 508 
Frederick William 1. of Prus- 
sia, 508 
Frederick William II. of 

Prussia, 506, 539 
Frederick William III. of 

Prussia, 556, 562, 608 
Frederick William IV. of 

Prussia, 608 
Frederick ol Saxony 

(Elector), 399 
Free Cities, The (Germany), 

290 
Free Church, The (Scotland), 

592, 593 
" Free-soilers " (U.S.), 736 
Frere, Sir Bartle, 711 
Friesland, 182, 183 
Frisii, Frisians, 161, 212 
Frobisher(the navigator), 449, 

5H 
Frontenac, Count de (Canada), 

516, 517 _ 
Fuh-chau (Foo-choo), 648 
Fulahs, Fulah States (Africa), 

701, 704 
Fulda, Abbey of, 183 



G. 

Gabor, Bethlen, 451 
Gades (Cadiz), 142 
Gaeta, 624 
Gaius, 187 
Galatia, 70, 151 
Galba, EmperDr, 165 
Galicia, 210, 240, 566 
Galilasa, 36, 38 
Gallia Cisalpina, 124 
Gallia Narbonensis, 148, 149 



Gascony, 273, 301, 304 
Gascon de r oix, 393 



Gallia Transalpina, 124 

Gallienus, Emperor, 169 

Gallipoli, 358 

Galloway, 200 

Gambetta, 601 

Gambia, 701, 702 

Gardiner, Bishop ofWinches- 

ter, 411 
Garfield, President, 746 
Garibaldi, 6^2, 621, 623, 624, 756 
Garrison, William Lloyd 

(U.S.), 735 

73, 3° 
Foix, 
Gaugamela, 66 
Gaul, Gauls, 124, 136, 139, 186 
Gautama (Buddha), 655, 682 
Gebal, 41 
Gedrosia, 112 
Gela, 46 

Gellius Egnatius, 136 
Gelon of Syracuse, 45, 46 
Geneva, 409, 412, 414, 416 
Geneva Arbitration, 732 
Genghis Khan, 254, 325, 355, 

637, 646, 679 
Genoa, Genoese, 245, 251, 253, 

256, 284, 340, 341, 359, 388, 

389, 404, 489, 531, 533, 566 
Genseric, 176, 177 
Geoffrey Plantagenet of An- 

jou, 268 
George I. of England, 480 
George II. ofEngland, 480, 509 
George III. of England, 524, 

534, 547. 567 
George IV. ofEngland, 578 
George, King of Greece, 630 
Georgia, 516, 742 
Geraldines, The (Ireland), 

3i5, 395. 396, 418 
German Confederation. 566 
German Empire, 230, 236 
Germania Inferior, 160 
Germania Superior, 160 
Germanic tribes, 173 
Germanicus, 164 
Germany, Ancient, 160, 161 
Germany, Mediaeval, 230, 330, 

332, 399, 486, 497 
Germany, 556, 565, 567, 573, 

574, 623, 611, 642, 700, 701, 

762 
Gessi, The, 695 
Getae, 11 1 
Ghazni, 675 
Ghent, 318, 319, 320, 401. 434. 

438, 442, 444 
Ghibelins, 289, 293, 294 
Gholab Sing, 673 
Ghor, Sultans of, 679 
Gibraltar, 208, 342, 495, 498. 5^5 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 450, 

515. 727 
Gilbert, Raleigh, 450 
Giorgione, 373 
Giotto, 372 
Girondists, 539, 541 
Giustiniani, 360, 361 
Gizeh, 8 
Gladstone, Mr., 582, 588, 589, 

623, 625, 676, 732 
Glasgow, 201, 338 
Glasgow, University of, 372, 

417, 476 
Glastonbury, 222 



Index 



in 



Glendower, Owen, 3c 8 

Goa, 65S, 659 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 250, 253 

Godwin, Earl, 224, 225 

Gold Coast, 354, 701, 702, 703 

Golden Bull of Germany, 330 

Golden Bull of Hungary, 327 

Goldie, Sir G. T., 704 

Gomar, Francis, 446 

Gondar, 698 

Gonsalvo di Cordova, 389 

Goorkhas (Gurkhas), 641, 667 

Gordiura, 52 

Gordon, General Charles, 649, 

690, 695 
Gordon, Lord George, 547 
Gordon (" iSo-Popery") riots, 

547 

Gorra, King of Denmark, 229 

Gotha, 510 

Gothland, 229, 363, 365, 421 

Goths, 168, 169, 170, 181, 186, 
187, i8£ 

Goths, East and West, 174 

Gough, Sir Hugh (Lord;, 648, 
670, 671, 669 

Govind Singh, 670 

Gozo, 258 

Graham, General, 695 

Graham, Sir Thomas, 560 

Graham's Town, 710 

Granada, 239, 283, 343, 344, 345 

Grand Alliance, 492, 494, 497 

Grant, General, 700, 740, 741, 
742, 743. 744 

Granvella, Cardinal, 436, 437 

Granville, Lord, 676 

Grasse, Comte de, 534 

Grattan, Henry, 551 

Grau, Admiral, 754 

Gray Friars, 264. See Fran- 
ciscans 

" Great Assassin," The, 641 

Great Privilege, The, 320 

Great Protestation, The, 459 

Great Wall of China, 645 

Greece and Greeks, Ancient, 
58, 69-122 

Greece, Mediaeval and Mod- 
ern, 567, 569, 627, 629, 630, 631 

Greek (Byzantine) Empire, 
207 

Greek language, 370 

Greek literature, 120 

Greenland, 230 

Gregory I. (the Great), Pope, 
182, 202 

Gregory II., Pope, 182, 183 

Gregory VII. , Pope, 234, 235. 
See Hildebrand 

Gregory IX., Pope, 254, 281, 
292 

Gregory XIII., Pope, 424, 429 

Gregory XVI., Pope, 626 

Grey, Lady Jane, 411 

Grey, Lord Leonard, 396 

Grey, Sir George, 711 

Griqualand West, 711, 712 

Grocyn, William, 371 

Guarinus of Verona, 370 

Guatemala, 753 

Guelphs, 289, 293, 294 
Gueux, 438 
Guiana, 759 
Guiana, British, 759 
Guiana, Dutch, 759, 760 



Guiana, French, 760 

Guienne, 301, 304 

Guinea, 701 

Guinea coast, 706 

Guiscard, Robert, 217, 235, 
248, 284 

Guises, The (France), 422, 423 

Guizot, 595 

Gujerat, 657, 658 

Gunpowder Plot, 459 

Gustavus Adolphus of Swe- 
den, 452-455 

Gustavus 111. of Sweden, 500 

Gustavus Vasa, 420, 453 

Gwalior, 658, 662, 663, 669, 673 

Guthorm (Guthrum), 220 

kyRes, 13, 49, 50 

Gylippus, 82, 104 



H. 

Habeas Corpus Act, 476, 548, 

578 
Haco of Norway, 275 
Hadrian, Emperor, 67, 166, 193 
Hague, The, 487 
Haidar (Hyder) Ali, 662, 663 
Hainan, 649 

Haiti (Hispaniola, St. Domin- 
go). 378, 749-751 
Hales, Alexander de, 264, 369 
Halicarnassus, 73 
Halifax (Nova Scotia), 521,522 
Halys, The, 50, 51 
Hamath, 24 
Hamburg, 364, 366, 562, 566, 

6io, 611 
Hamilcar Barca, 138, 139 
Hamilton, Patrick, 412, 413 
Hamitic race, 3 
Hammurabi, 19 
Hampden, John, 460 
Hampton Court Conference, 

412 
Hannibal, 139-141 
Hanoi, 686 
Hanover, 482, 483, 510, 554, 557, 

566, 567, 606-609 
Hanover, House of, 451, 478, 

480 
Hansa, Hanseatic League, 

260, 277, 362, 364-366 
Hapsburg, House of, 331, 458, 

501, 508 
Hardenberg, 563 
Hardinge, bir Henry (Lord), 

669, 670 
Harold L, 224 
Harold II., 225, 226 
Harold Haarfager, 229, 230 
Harold Hardraada, 226, 230, 

278 
Hatoun-al-Raschid, 238, 242 
Harper's Ferry (U.S ), 737 
Harris, General (Lord), 665 
Harrison, President, 747 
Harthacnut, 224 
Hasdrubal, 141, 142 
Hasting (the Dane), 220 
Hastings, Marquis of, 667 
Hastings, Warren, 661-663 
Hatasu, Queen (Egypt), 10 
Hatra, 66, 67 
Haussas, The (West Africa), 

703, 704, 705 



Havana, 525, 749 

Havelock, Sir Henry, 669, 674 

Hawaii, 765 

Hawkins, Sir John, 449 

Hawkwood, Sir John, 295 

Hearne, Samuel, the traveller, 

518 
Hebert, 538, 543 
Hebrides, The, 275, 278, 413 
Hecatompylos, 60 
" Hegira,' The, 205 
Heidelberg, 492 
Heinsius, 494, 496 
Helena, St., 387, 565 
Heligoland, 558, 566, 567 
Helots, The (Sparta), 81 
Helvetia, 148 
Hellas, Hellenes, The, 57, 

7i-74 
Hellespont, 57, m, 150 
Henry, Cardinal, of Portugal, 

464, 465 
Henry I. of England, 267 
Henry II. of England, 268 270, 

274-276, 279, 315 
Henry III. of England, 272, 

273, 276 
Henry IV. of England, 308 
Henry V. of England, 308, 3c 9 
Henry VI. of England, 309, 

311, 313, 321 
Henry VII. of England, 314, 

371, 392, 394 
Henry VIII. of England, 273- 

276, 312, 393, 396, 405, 406, 

410, 411, 413, 418 
Henry II. of France, 404, 408, 

421, 422 
Henry III. of France, 425-427 
Henry IV. of France, 423, 426- 

428, 436, 445, 515 
Henry I. of Germany ("The 

Fowler"), 229, 230, 231 
Henry II. of German}-, 233, 

246 
Henry III. of Germany, 233 
Henry IV. of Germany, 234, 

235 
Henry V. of Germany, 235, 236 
Henry VI. of Germany, 290 
Henry VII. of Germany, 330 
Henry of Guise, 425, 426 
Henry of Navarre. See 

Henry IV. of France 
Heniy "the Navigator" 

(Portugal), 352-354 
Henry, Patrick, 533 
Heraclius (Greek emperor), 

188, 678 
Herat, 355, 380 
Herculaneum, 165 
Heresy, Statute of, 308 
Her-Hor, 12 

Herman, 161. See Arminius 
Herod Agrippa I., 36, 37 
Herod Agrippa II., 36 
Herod Antipas, 36 
Herod Archelaus, 37 
Herod the Great, 35, 36 
Herodias, 36 
Herodotus, 14, 121 
Heroic Age (Greece), 79 
Heruli, The, 178 
Herzegovina, 355,614,639,641 
Hesse, 510, 609 
Hessen Cassel, 557, 606, 610 



778 



Index 



Hessen-Darmstadt, 610, 611 

Hezekiah, King, 31 

Hicks Pasha, 69s 

Hiero of Syracuse, 139 

" High Church " party, 593 

High Commission Court, 412, 

45?. 477 
Hildebrand, 234. See Gregory 

VII., Pope 
Himera, 45, 46 
Himilco, 47 
Hipparchus, 87 
Hippias, 86, 88, 90 
Hiram of Tyre, 42 
Histiaeus, 57 
Hittites, The, 22, 23, 29 
Hoche, General, 551 
Hochelaga, 514 
Hofer, Andreas, 561 
Hohenstaufen emperors 

(Germany), 287, 293 
Hohenzollern, House of, 508 
Holkar of Indore, 658, 665, 

666, 673 
Holland, 317, 3 l %< 43 2 > 433. 

442, 445, 446, 448, 483, 486, 

487, 492, 494. 5°9. 534, 54i, 

549> 553, 556, 562, 566, 574, 

615, 685, 702, 762 
Holstein, 419, 452, 456, 609, 617 
" Holy Alliance," lhe, 733, 

734 
" Holy Brotherhood," The 

(Spain), 344 
Holy Island, 201. See Lin- 

disfarne 
" Holy League," The, 390, 

394, 405, 425 
" Holy Roman Empire, "Th", 

214, 231, 23?, 287, 401, 457, 

555 
"Home Rule '(Ireland), 587- 

Honduras, British, 752, 753 
Hong-Kong, 648, 684 
Honolulu, 764 
Honorius, Emperor, 176 
Hood, Admiral Sir Samuel, 

534 
Hood, General (L'.S ). 742 
Hooker, General (U.S ), 742 
Hooper, Bishop, 411 
Horace (the poet), 159 
Horatius, Consul (Rome), 129 
Horn, Count, 437-439 
Horn, General, 455 
Hospitallers, Knights, 257 
Hottentots, 709 
Hovas, The (Madagascar), 717 
Howard, Lord, 449 
Howe, Admiral Lord, 549 
Howe, Elias (U.S.), 747 
Hubert de Burgh, 272, 273 
Hubert Walter, 270 
Hudson Bay, 518 
Hudson Bay Company, 498, 

725 
Hudson Bay Territory, 518 
Hudson, Henry, 514, 516 
Hugh, 659 

Hugo of Vermandois, 250 
Huguenots, 422426, 429, 461, 

490, 491, 517, 700 
" Humanists," The, 371 
Humbert I. (Italy), 625 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 563 



" Hundred Days," The, 565 
Hungary, Hungarians, 231, 

253, 326, 327, 329, 355, 469, 

470. 489, 5°i> 5<2, 508, 574, 

607, 608, 610, 613 
Huniades (Hunyadi Janos), 

328, 36 ~, 361 
Huns, The, 70, 174, 175, 177, 

178, 183, 246 
Hunter, General (Sudan war), 

696 
Huntly, Earl of, 417 
Hurons, The (North America), 

515 
Hus, John (Huss), 331, 335, 336 
Hutchinson, General, 546 
Hydaspes, The, 60, 112 
Hyksos, The ("Shepherd 

Kings " Egypt), 9 
Hyperides (orator), 114 
Hyrcania, Hyrcanians, 54, 55, 

60, 112 



Iberians, 124 

Ibrahim Pasha, 628, 629, 689, 
690 

Iceland, 216, 229 

Iconium, 250, 356 

Iconoclastic contest (Church), 
242 

" Iconoclasts," The (Nether- 
lands), 438 

Ignatius de Loyola, 429, 431 

Illinois (U.S.), 734 

Illyrians, Illyria, m, 566 

Ilorin (West Africa), 704 

Incas (Peru), 385 

Indemnity, Act of, 481 

Independents (or Congrega- 
tionalists), 481 

India, 112, 113, 355, 483, 654, 
655. 674, 675 

India Act (1784), 663 

Indies, West, 379, 748 752 

Indo-European race, 70 

Indulgences, 391 

Ine (Ina), 197, 198 

Innocent II., Pope, 264 

Innocent III., Pope, 253, 264, 
271, 272, 281, 282, 290 

Innocent IV., Pope, 292 

Innocent X., Pope, 457 

Innocent XL, Pope, 489, 532 

Inquisition, The, 259, 264, 281, 
344, 348, 428, 463, 620, 658 

Interdict, 271 

International Working-Men's 
Association, 572 

Inverness, 275, 476 

Investiture, 234, 235, 236, 267 

" Invincibles, ' The, 588 

Iona, 201 

Ionian Isles, 286, 544, 630 

Ionians, Ancient, 71-74, 98 

Iowa (U.S.), 735 

Iphicrates, 14 

Ipsambul, 11 

Irawaddi river, 667, 672 

Ireland, 198, 199, 274, 275, 315, 
418, 421, 460, 476, 550, 586- 
592, 627 

Irene, Empress, 242 

Irish Church Disestablish- 
ment Act, 592 



Irish Land Question and Acts, 

589-591 
Irish Parliament, 478, 551 
" Ironsides," The, 460 
Iroquois, The (North 

America), 515-517 
Isabella of Castile,343-347, 378, 

618, 619 
Isabella of France (wife of 

Edward II.), 302, 303 
Isabella, daughter of Philip II. 

of Spain, 445 
Isaiah, 31 
Islam, 203 
Ispahan, 679 
Israel, 30 
Isthmian Games (or Festival), 

76, 77, 116 
Italy, 179, 230, 244, 293, 297, 

372-375, 3 8 9> 4°5, 4c6, 421, 

465, 529, 533, 545, 556, 566, 

569, 574, 609, 625, 7. 1 
" Italy, Young," 621 
Ithobal (Eth-baal), 43 
Ithome, 83 

Ivan III. of Russia, 325, 326 
Ivan IV. of Russia, 468 



"Jack Straw," 305 
Jackson, Andrew (U.S.), 736 
Jackson, General " Stone- 
wall," 739, 740, 742 
Jackson, Port (Australia), 761 
Jacob, 29 
Jacobins, The (France), 538, 

539,. 54i, 543 
Jacobites, 478 
Jacqueline of Hainault, 319 
Jacqncrie, The (France), 321 
Jaffa, 252 
Jagiello or Jagellon dynasty 

(Poland), 326, 466 
Jamaica, 379, 475, 751, 752 
James, Apostle, 36 
James I. of England, 412, 446, 
459. See James VI. of 
Scotland 
James II. of England, 477,494 
James 1. of Scotland, 314 
James II. of Scotland, 315 
James III. of Scotland, 315 
James IV. of Scotland, 393, 394 
James V. of Scotland, 412 413, 

414 
James VI. ot Scotland, 417. 

See James I. of England 
James Stuart (elder Pre- 
tender, 494 
" Jameson Raid," The, 712 
Janissaries, 357, 359, 361, 472, 

Jansenists, The, 532 

Japan, Japanese, 647, 649653, 

655 
Java, 684 

Jeanne d'Albret, 423 
Jeanne Dare, 322, 323 
Jefferson, Thomas (U.S.), 728 
Jeffreys, Judge, 477 
Jehan, Shah (India), 657, 659 
Jehangir, Sultan (India), 657, 

659 



Ind 



Jehoahaz, 14 
Jehoiachin, 32 
Jehoiakim, 14 
Jehoshaphat, 31 
Jehu, 23 

Jelalabad, 669 
eroboam, 12 
Jerome of Prague, 335, 336 
Jerusalem, 20, 30-33, 35, 38, 

188, 250, 251, 254, 257, 258 
Jervis, Sir John (Earl St. 

Vincent), 523, 549 
Jesuits, Order of, 429, 430, 431, 
450, 463, 467, 532, 611, 620, 
621, 658, 716, 756 
Jews, 28-38, 344, 462, 581, 692 
Jezebel, 31, 43 
Joab, 30 

Joan of Arc. See Jeanne Dare 
Joanna of Spain, 392 
John, Archduke, of Austria, 

546 
John, Don, of Austria, 441, 442, 

473 
John Ball, 305 
John the Baptist, 36 
John, King, of England, 270, 

271, 275, 276 
John, King, of France, 261 
John of Gaunt, 303, 308 
John Hyrcanus, 35 
John I. (the Great) of Portu- 

? al , 35', 352, 462 
John II. of Portugal, 352, 354 
John III. of Portugal, 463 
John IV. of Portugal, 465 
John VI. of Portugal, 620 
John II., Emperor, 284 
John V., Greek Emperor, 358 
John Cantacuzenus, Emperor, 

3S8 
John Paleologus, Emperor, 

358 
John VII., Emperor, 359, 360 
John Frederick, Elector of 

Saxony, 4^3 
John Zimisces, 243 
Johnson, Sir William (Can- 
ada), 520, 525 
Johnston, Sir Harry (Africa), 

713 
Johnston, General Joseph 

(U.S.), 740, 743 
Johnston, General Sidney 

(U.S.), 74* 
Joseph I., Emperor, of Ger- 
many, 495, 496 
Joseph II., Emperor, of Ger- 
many, 502, 513 
Joseph I. of Portugal, 528 
Joseph Bonaparte, King of 

Spain, 560 
Josephine, Empress, 561 
Joseph (patriarch), 9 
Joshua, 20 
Josiah, King, 14, 32 
Jourdan, Marshal, 543, 545, 

554, 56° 
Judah, 30, 31 
Judas Maccabaeus, 34 
Judea, 37, 38, 58, 164 
Jugurtha, 149 
Julian Calendar, 156 
Julian, Emperor (•' the Apos- 

tate"), 173, 194, 677 
Julius Agricola, 192 



ex 



Julius Caesar, 161. See Caesar 

Julius II., Pope, 390, 391, 393 

Jung Bahadoor, 673 

Junot, Marshal, 558 

Jus intcrccssionis (Rome), 128 

Justiciar, The, 270 

Justinian, Emperor, 181, 184- 

187 
Jutes, Jutland, 195 
Juvenal, 159 

K. 

Kabul, 668, 669, 675 

Kabyles (Algeria.), 673 

Kadesh, n 

Kaffirs (Caffres), 709-711, 716 

Kaffraria, British, 711 

Kairwan/207 

Kalah (Nimrud), 22, 23 

Kamarina, 46 

Kanaris, Constantine, 628 

Kandahar, 669, 675, 679 

Kandy (Ceylon), 682, 683 

Kansas (U.S.), 737 

Karkhemish, 11, 14, 23, 24 

Karl the Fat, 217 

Karl the Great (Charlemagne), 

183, 202, 211-214, 218, 245, 

318, 332, 364 
Karl Martel, 210. See Charles 

Martel 
Karnak, n 
Kars, 639, 640 
Kashmir, 657 
Katane, 47 

Katharine of Aragon, 393, 410 
Katharine of France (wife of 

Henry V.), 309, 314 
Kearney, General (U.S.), 736 
Keith, Marshal, 512 
Kellermann, Marshal, 554 
Kelso, 413 

Kelts, 124. See Celts 
Kent, 195, 197, 203 
Kentigern (St. Mungo), 201 
Kentucky, 728, 739 
Kerim Khan, 679 
Khafra (Cephrenes), 8 
Khartum, 695, 696 
Kherson, 505 
Khita, The (Hittitesl, 11 
Khiva, 3ss, 356, 637, 638 
Khokand, 637, 638 
Khoord-Kabul Pass, 669 
Khorassan, 678 
Khorsabad, 25 
Khufu (Cheops), 8 
Khyber Pass, 669 
Kieff (Kiev), 324 
Kildare, Earls of (Ireland), 
„ 3i6, 395, 39 6 
Kilkenny, 476 

Kilkenn}-, Statute of, 316, 395 
Kimon, 99 

Kingston (Canada), 522, 723 
Kinsale, 419 
Kitchener, Sir Herbert, 696, 

6 ?7 „ 
Kleber, General, 546 
Klondike, 725 
Knights Hospitallers. See 

Knights of St. John 
Knights of St. John, 257, 258, 

259, 35°, 529, 545, 553, 69 1 



779 

Knights of Malta. See 

Knights of St. John 
Knights Templars, 259, 283, 

350 
Knox, John, 372, 415-417 
Koffee Kalkalli, 702 
Koln (Cologne), 233, 331 
Kolokotronis, Theodoros, 628 
Koran, The, 204 
Kordofan, 695 
Kosciusko, 506, 597 
Kossuth, Louis, 6 7 
Kriiger, Paul, 712 
Kublai Khan, 646 
Kumassi, 702, 703 
Kurush (Kei Khosroo), Cyrus 

of Persia, 54 
Kush, 27 

Kyaxares, 27, 50, 53 
Kypselus, 80 



La Hire, 321, 322 

La Bourdonnais, 660, 718 

Labienus, 155, 156 

Labuan, 684 

Lacedaemonians {Periaci), 81 

Lachine (Canada), 516 

Laconia, 71, 73 

Lafayette, 537, 53P, 54c, 594 

Lagos, 701, 703 

Lahore, 656, 671, 672 

Lainez, 430 

Lake, General (Lord), 552, 665, 
666 

Lamachus, 104 

Lamoriciere, General, 693 

Lancastrian kings, 308 

Lander, Richard and John, 
699 

Lanfranc, 226, 266 

Langahbalele, 715 

Langland, 306 

Langobardi (Langobards), 174, 
213. See Lombards 

Langside, 417 

Langton, Archbishop Ste- 
phen, 271 

Languedoc, 280, 281 

Lannes, Marshal, 554 

Lansdowne, Lord, 077 

Lao-Tsze, 645 

Larsam (Larsa), 18, 19 

Lascaris, Constantine and 
John, 370 

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 572 

Lateran Council, 236 

Latimer, Bishop, 411 » 

Latin Empire (Constanti- 
nople), 285, 286, 287 

Latin League, 125, 135 

Latins, 125 

Laud, Archbishop, 459, 460 

Lauderdale, Duke of, 476 

Laudohn (or Loudon), Mar- 
shal, 511, 512 

Laurium, 86, 95 

Lawrence, Sir Henry, 672 
Lawrence, Sir John (Lord), 

672-674 
Laws of Twelve Tables 

(Rome), 128 
Le Mans, 602 
Lebanon, 39 



;8o 



Index 



Ledyard (African traveller), 

699 
Lee, General Robert, 740-744 
Legate (Rome), 158 
Leghorn, 625 
Leinster, 200, 227 
Leipzig, 369 
Leith, 416 

Lenaea, The (Attica), 75 
Leo L, Greek Emperor, 183 
Leo III., Greek Emperor, 183 
Leo the Armenian, 242 
Leo the Isaurian, 207, 208, 242, 

247 
Leo the Great, Pope, 182 
Leo III., Pope, 213 
Leo VIII. , Pope, 232 
Leo X., Pope, 371,391, 404, 411 
Leo XII., Pope, 626 
Leo XIII., Pope, 577, 6n, 627 
Leofwin, Earl, 224 
Leon, Kingdom of, 237, 240, 

241, 283 
Leonardo da Vinci, 372 
Leonidas, 96 
Leopold of Austria, 333 
Leopold II. of Austria, 539 
Leopold I. of Belgium, 616 
Leopold II. of Belgium, 616 
Leopold I. of Germany, 487, 

494, 5 01 
Leopold II. of Germany, 533 
l.epidus 157 

Lerma, Duke of, 445, 461, 465 
Lesbos, 73, 102, 105 
Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 605, 

690 
Levis, De (Canada), 520, 521, 

524 
Lex Julia (Rome), 150 
Leyden, 446 ' 
Libel Act, 550 
Liberia, 701 

Libcrum veto (Poland), 467 
Licensing Act, 478 
Licinian laws (Rome), 129 
Liciors (Rome), 126 
Ligurians, 124 
Lille, 486, 497 

Lilybaion (Lilybasum), 47, 48 
Lima, 385, 754 
Limerick, 200, 227 
Linacre, Thomas, 371 
Lincoln, President Abraham, 

586, 731, 739 et seq. 
Lindisfarne, 201, 202. See 

Holy Island 
Lindum (Lincoln), 194 
"Lion's mouth, "The (Venice), 

340 
Lisbon, 350, 351, 462, 463, 528, 

529 
Lithuania, 467 
Liudprand, 183 
Livingstone, Dr., 700 
Livius, Consul (Rome), 142 
Livonia, 467, 500 
Llewellyns of Wales, 276, 299 
Lo Bengula, 713 
Local Government Act (1858), 

583 
Local Government Act (1888), 

583. 
Locris, 116 

Lokoja (West Africa), 704 
Lollards, The, 306, 308 



Lombard League, 292, 295 

Lombardo - Venetian king- 
dom, 566 

Lombards, Lombardy, 181,183, 
187, 212, 231, 235, 289, 295, 
390, 404, 544, 621, 623 

Lombardus (Peter Lombard), 

, 36 9, 

London, 193, 219, 220, 225, 

266, 305, 311, 363 
Long Parliament, 460 
Longobardi (Langobardi), 161, 

247. See Lombards 
Lopez, President (Paraguay), 

756 
" Lords of Snowdon," 276 
" Lords of the Congregation " 

(Scotland), 416 
Lorraine, 290, 324, 526 
Lothar, 214 

Lotharingia (Lorraine), 231 
Lothian, 200, 229, 227 
Louis, Port (Mauritius), 718, 

719 
Louis VI. of France, 278, 279 
Louis VII. of France, 251, 

279 
Louis IX. of France, 254, 

282, 687 
Louis Xl. of France, 324, 334 
Louis XII. of France, 390, 391 
Louis XIII. of France, 461 
Louis XIV. of France, 478, 

482-489, 49 I "499i 5 2 5» 5 2 9, 6 5 6 
Louis XV. of France, 525, 529 
Louis XVI. of France, 526, 

537, 539, 540, 541 
Louis XVII. of France, 564 
Louis XVIII. of France, 564, 

565. 593 

Louis Philippe of France, 594- 

59 6 
Louis II. of Hungarv, 470 
Louis the Great of Hungary, 

327 
Louisa, Oueen, of Prussia, 

556. 
Louisiana, 516, 525, 546, 729, 

t 739 k 

Louisbourg, 519, 520, 522 

Louvain, 442 

Louvois, 485, 492, 493 

Louvre Gallery (Paris), 553 

" Loyalists," The (Canada), 

722 

Loyola, Ignatius, 430 

Lilbeck, 361, 365, 366, 562, 

566, 610, 611 
Luoania, 124, 136, 140, 150 
Lucca, 294, 296, 566 
Lucerne, 334 

Lucian, 167 
Lucknow, 674 
Lucretius, 120 
Lucullus, 150, 151 
Lucumos (htruria), 124 
" Luddites," The, 577 
Ludwig IV. of Germany, 330 
Ludwig the Pious. 214 
Luis I. of Portugal, 620 
Lutatius Catulus, 139 
Luther, Martin, Lutheians, 

399, 4°i-4°5> 4". 428, 432, 438, 

457 
Luxembourg, Marshal, Duke 

of, 487, 488, 493 



" Luxemburg question," The, 

616 
Lycia, 164 

Lycurgus, 81-83, "5, "6 
Lydia, Lvdians, 49-51, 73 
Lynedoch, Lord, 560. See 

Graham, Sir Thomas 
Lysander, 82, 106, 107 
Lytton, Lord (Viceroy of 

India) 675 



M. 

MacAlpin, Kenneth (Scot- 
land), 201, 227 
MacArthur, Captain (Austra- 
lia), 761 
Macartney, Lord, 647 
Macaulay, Lord, 668 
Maccabees, The, 34 
MacCarthy, Sir Cnarles, 702 
Macdonald, Marshal, 564 
Macedonia, 44, 71, 109, 114, 116, 

286, 358, 630 
Machiavelli, 406 
Mack, General, 555 
Mackenzie, Alexander (ex- 
plorer), 518 
Mackenzie, William Lyon 

(Canada), 722, 723 
Mackintosh, Sir James, 584 
MacMahon, Marshal, 600, 604, 

605, 693 
Macrinus, Emperor (Rome), 68 
Macro, Emperor (Rome), 164 
Madagascar, 701, 717, 718 
Madeiras, The, 353, 719 
Madison, President (U.S.), 729 
Madras, 659, 665, 666, 673 
Madrid, 559, 56a 
Maecenas, 159 
Maestricht, 441 
Magdala, 698, 699 
Magalhaes (Magellan), 319, 

463, 685 
Magi, The, 53, 63 
Magna Graecxa (Italy), 124 
Magnus of Norway, 278 
Magyars, The, 243 
Mahdi, The (Soudan), 695,696 
Mahmud, Emir (Soudan war), 

697 
Mahmud of Ghazni, 656 
Mahmud of India, Sultan, 679 
Mahrattas, The (India), 657, 

658, 660, 662-665, 667, 669 
Maine (France), 218, 226, 267, 

268, 270, 324 
Maine (U. S.), 734 
A/a/ne (battleship), 748 
Maintenon, Mine, de, 489, 490, 

495 

Mainz (Mayence), 183, 233, 
290, 330, 454, 492. 542 

Maitland of Lethington (Scot- 
land), 372 

Majestas, Law of (Rome), 163 

Majorca, 239 

Malabars, The (or Tamils) 
(Indial, 682 

Malacca, 683 

Malachy, King (Ireland), 227, 



Malaga, 345 
Malay pirates, 683 



Index 



781 



Malay States, 684 
Malcolm of Scotland, 221 
Malcolm II. of Scotland, 227 
Malcolm III. of Scotland 

(Can more), 227 
Malcolm, Sir John (India), 667 
Malta, 41, 258, 545, 553. 566 
Mamluk rulers ot Egypt, 688 
Mamluks, The, 471, 545, 687, 

688, 689 
Man, Isle of, 229 
Manasseh, King, 31 
Manetho, 8 
Manfred of Sicily, 292 
Manilla 685 
Manin, Daniel, 622 
Manitoba (Red River Settle- 
ment), 724, 725, 726 
Mannheim, 492 
Manning, Cardinal, 593 
Mansfeld, Count Ernest of, 

45i, 452- 
Mansfield, Lord, Chief Jus- 
tice, 550, 567 
Mantua, 544, 623 
Manuel Chrysoloras, 370 
Manuel the Fortunate of 

Portugal, 386 
Manuel Paleologus, Emperor, 

359 
Manuel Pardo of Peru, 754 
Marat, 538, 541 
Marathus, 39 
Marcellus, 140, 141 
Marco Polo, 646, 651, 717 
Marcomanni, The, 160, 167, 169 
Marcos Bozzaris, 628 
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 

120, 166, 167 
Mardonius 88, 97 
Marduk (Merodach), 22 
Margaret of Anjou, 309, 310, 

311, 312, 313 
Margaret of Denmark, 277, 278 
Margaret, sister of Edgar 

jEtheling, wife of Malcolm 

Canmore, 227, 267 
Margaret of Norway, 299, 315 
Margaret, Duchess of Parma, 

436, 437, 439 
Margiana, 64 
Margraves, 213 
Maria da Gloria of Portugal, 

620 
Maria Louisa, Empress, 561 
Maria Theresa, Empress of 

Austria, 502, 508, 5-9 
Marie Antoinette, 526, 537, S42 
Marie Christina of Spain, 618 
Mariner's compass, 373 
Maritz (South Africa), 715 
Marius, 149, 15^ 151 
Marlborough, Duke of, 494, 

495, 496, 497 
Marmont Marshal, 550, 563 
Marnix, Philip van, 438 
Marriage Act, ";8i 
Marsh, Adam (deMarisco),273 
Marsi, The, 135 
Marsin, Marshal, 495, 497 
Martaban, 672 
Martial, 189 

Martin V., Pope, 307, 331, 338 
Marx, Karl, 572 
Mary of Burgundy, 320, 332, 

392. 433 



Mary I. of England, 411, 416, 

418 
Mary II. of England, 477 
Mary of Guise, 413, 414, 416 
Mary Stuart, 413, 416, 417, 421, 

43° 
Maryland (U.S.), 516, 517 
'Mas Aniello (Naples), 531 
Mashonaland, 712, 713 
Masinissa, Kinsr, 143 
Massachusetts (U.S.), 516, 517, 

5i8, 533 
Massena, Marshal, 545, 546, 

554, 559 
Massilia (Marseilles), 155 
Massillon, 484 
Massowah, 698, 699 
Matabele, The, 709 
Matabeleland, 712, 713 
Mathias, Archduke of Aus- 
tria, 442 
Mathias, Emperor, 450 
Matilda (Maud), wife of 

Henry I., 267 
Matilda (Maud), Empress, 268 
Matteo Visconti, 295 
Matthias Corvinus of Hun- 
gary, 328, 329, 331, 361, 470 
Maurice, Prince, of Nassau, 

445-448 
Maurice, Duke, ofSaxony, 404 
Mauritania (Morocco), 164, 

209, 216, 687 
Mauritius, 718, 719 
Maurocordatos (Mavrocor- 

dato) ; Alexander, 628 
Maximilian I., Emperor, 320, 

390, 392 
Maximilian II., Emperor, 450 
Maximilian of Mexico, 748 
Mayenne, Due de (France), 

426 
Mayo, Lord (Viceroy of India), 

674 
"Mayors ot the Palace" 

(France), 191 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 4S3, 484 
Mazeppa, 499 
Mazzini (Italy), 621 
McClellan, General (U.S.\ 742 
McKinley, President (U.S.), 

747 
Meade, General (U.S.), 742 
Meath, 200, 228, 315 
Mecca, 204, 205, 68i, 6S9 
Mechlin, 438, 444 
Mecklenburgs, 290, 610 
Media, Medians (Medes), 26, 

27, 53, 55, 60, 65, 6g 
Medici, The (Italy), 296, 390, 

406, 407 
Medici, Catharine de', 421, 423- 

425 
Medici, Giovanni de', 391 
Medici, Giuliano de', 297 
Medici, Lorenzo de', 297, 370 
Medici, Marie de', 428, 461 
Medina, 205, 681, 689 
Mediolanum (Milan), 171 
Meerut, 673 
Megabyzus, 57 
Megara, 80, 84, 117 
Megaris, 73 
Megalopolis, 108 
Megiddo, 14, 32 
Mehemet All of Egvpt, 639, 681 



Meistcrsinger, The (Germany), 

,374 

Melanchthon, 400, 403, 410 

Melas, General, 546 

Melbourne (Australia), 761 

Melinde, 716 

Melkarth, 40 

Melos, 103 

Melrose, 413 

Melville, Andrew, 372, 417 

Memnon of Rhodes, 111 

Memphis, 8, 13-15 

Mendoza (Mexico), 384 

Mendoza, Cardinal, 343, 345 

Menelek II. of Abyssinia, 699 

Menephthah, 11 

Menkaura (Mycerinus), 8 

Mercia, 195, 197, 2:3, 223, 223, 

224 
Meri, Lake (Mceris), 9 
Mermnadae, The, 49, 51 
Merodach, 25 
Merodach-baladan II., 20 
Merodach-baladan III., 25 
Merowingian kings, 190, 191 
Merv, 355, 638 
Mesopotamia, 64, 66, 67, 68 
Messalina, 164 
Messana, 48 

Messenia, 71, 73, 83, 84, 108 
Metammeh, 6. 96, 697 
Methodism (Wesleyan move- 
ment), 481 
Meteeci (Sparta), 86, 87 
Metternich, Prince, 6c6, 607, 

631 
Metz, 4?4, 4C8, 457, 486, 601, 603 
Mexicans (Aztecs), 380 
Mexico (city), 381, 382, 383, 736, 

748 
Mexico (country), 380, 735, 736, 

749 
Miaulis, Andreas, 628, 629 
Michel-Angelo, 406 
Michigan, 735 
Middleburg, 440 
Middleton, Major-General, 725 
Miguel, Dom, 620 
Mikados (Japan), 650, 651, 652, 

653 
Milan, 172, 176, 289, 294, 297, 

389, 533, 544, 546, 625 
Milan, Decrees of, 557 
Milan, Duchy of, 296 
Milan I. of Servia, 642 
Milanese terri'ory, 404, 566 
Miletus, 51, 57, 73, 105 
Milford Haven, 314 
Milner, Sir Alfred, 714 
Miltiades, 90-94 
Minnesota, 737 
Minorca, 498, 534, 535 
Minorites (Lesser Brethren), 

264 
Minto, Earl of (India), 666 
Mirabeau, 537, 539 
Miramon, General, 747 
Misenum, 159 
Mississippi (river), 515, 517 

74i 
Mississippi (state), 734, 739 
Missolonghi, 628, 629 
Missouri Compromise, The 

(U.S.), 735, 738 
Missouri (river), 515 
Missouri (state), 734, 739 



782 



Index 



Mithra, 53 

Mithradates I., 60, 61 
Mithradates II., 61, 62 
Mithradates of Pontus, 62, 150, 

M'na (Menes), 8 
Mobile, 742 
Mocenigo (Doge), 341 
Modena, 294, 295, 533, 544, 

566, 621, 623 
Modena, Mary d'Este of, 477 
Moffat, Robert (missionary), 

700 
Mohammed Aga of Persia, 679 
Mohammed (Mehemet), 203, 

204, 206, 688 
Mohammed (Mehemet) Ali 

(Egypt), 689, 690 
Mohammed (son of Bajazet), 

359 
Mohammed II. of Turkej', 360, 

362 
Mohammed III. ot Turkey, 

473 
Mohammedanism, 203 
Moldavia, 467, 639, 640 
Moliere, 484 
Moloch, 40 
Moltke, Marshal von, 599, 600, 

602, 603, 609, 689 
Monasticism, 262-265 
Monck, Duke of Albemarle, 

475, 477 
Monck, Lord (Canada), 724 
Mongol khanates in Russia, 

325. 363 
Mongolian race, 1, 2 
Mongols, 258, 325, 326, 354, 

355. 35<5. 358, 646, 679 
Monmouth, Duke of, 477 
Monro, Sir Hector (lndial, 662 
Monroe Doctrine, The (U.S.), 

733, 734 

Monroe, James (U.S.), 733 

Mons, 493, 496 

Montcalm, Marquis de, 520, 
_52i, 52^, 524 

Montecuculli, 487, 488 

Montenegro. 569, 641 

Montesquieu, 536 

Montevideo, 755, 756 

Montezuma of Mexico, 381, 
382, 383 

Montmorenci, Anne de (Con- 
stable of France), 422 

Montmorency Falls (Canada 1 , 

524 
Montpellier, 368, 491 
Montreal, 516, 517, 524, 723, 

725 
Montrose, Marquis of, 460 
Mooltan, 671 
Moore, Sir John, 559 
Moors, 207, 241, 246, 692 
Moors in Spain, 209-211, 236- 

241, 283, 342, 314, 347, 348, 

465 
Moray, T^arl of, 417 
More, Sir Thomas, 37 r, 394, 

410 
Morea (Peloponnesus), 70, 

530, 531, 6i8, 629, 689 
Moreau, General, 543, 554 
Moriscos (Spain), 348, 462 
Morocco, 464, 693, 694. See 

Mauritania 



Morosine, Francesco, of 

Venice, 529, 530 
Mortimer, Roger, 302, 303 
Morton, John, Archbishop, 371, 

393 
Moscow, 468. 504, 562, 325 
" Mountain " party, The 

(France), 539, 541, 543 
Mozambique, 701, 717 
Mughal (Mogul) Empire 

(India), 657, 658, 660 
Mughal emperors, 658 
Mummius, Consul (Rome 1 , 

117 
Mungo Park, 699 
Municipal Corporation Act, 

583 
Municipal reform, 582 
Munster 200, 227, 228, 315 
Murad 1. (or Amuralh) of 

Turkey, 358 359 
Murad II. ot Turkey, 359, 361, 

362 
Murad III. of Turkey, 473 
Murad IV. of Turkey, 474 
Murat, Marshal, King of 

Naples, 565 
Murcia, 283 
Muscat, 681 
Mutina, 139 
Mysore, 662, 663, 665 
Mytilene, 102 

N. 

Nabonassar, 20 
Nabopolassar, 20, 27, 28 
Nabu-naid (Nabonidus), 23 
Nadir Shah (Peisia), 658, 679, 

681 
Nagasaki, 651 
Namur, 493 
Nanak Shah, 669 
Nanking, 647, 648, 649 
Nantes, Edict of, 426, 461, 709 
Nantes, Revocation of Edict 

of, 49 3 
Napier, Sir Charles, 669 
Napier, Sir Robert (Lord), of 

Magdala, 698, 699 
Naples, 368, 389, 498, 533, 544, 

556, 567, 624, 625 
Napoleon Bonaparte, 542-544, 

553-557) 55 8 -507, 596, 664 
Napoleon, Louis (Napoleon 

III.), Emperorofthe French, 

596, 597, 598, 599, 6oo, 616, 622, 

623, 748 
Narses, 181 

Narvaez, Marshal (Spain), 619 
Nasr-ed-din, Shah 01 Persia, 

68 d 
Nassau (Bahamas), 752 
Nassau, Adolphus o*', 439 
Nassau, Frederick Henry of, 

448 
Nassau, Louis of, 438, 439, 440 
Natal, 714, 715 
National Assembly (France), 

537, 539 
NationalConvention (France), 

54 1 , 543 

National Land League (Ire- 
land), 591 

Navarre, 211, 237, 240, 282, 343, 



Navigation Acts, 475, 517, 533, 
584 

Navigators' Islands, 763 

Naxos, 88 

Neapolis (Naples), 124, 339, 
405, 406, 408 

Nearchus, 112 

Nebraska (U.S.), 736, 744 

Nebuchadnezzar, 13, 20, 32, 
43, 5^ 

Necho (Neco or Neku), 13, 20, 
32,56 

Necker, 527, 536, 537 

Negropont, 342 

Nehemiah, 33 

Nelson, Dr. Wolfred(Canada), 
722 

Nelson, Lord, 545, 549, 554, 
555, 752 

Nemean games, 77 

Nergal, 22 

Nero, Emperor, 38,65,164,165 

Nerva, Emperor, 165 

Netherlands, 317, 319, 332, 365, 
408, 433, 435-44°, 565, 569 

Netherlands, Austrian, 498, 
544 

Netherlands, Kingdom of, 566 

Netherlands, Spanish, 444 

Netherlands, United, 457 

Neustria, 191, 214, 217 

Neutrality, Armed, or North- 
ern Convention, 549 

Nevada (U.S.), 744 

New Amsterdam, 516 

New Brunswick, 524, 724 

New Caledonia, 762 

New England, 518 

New Granada, 753 

New Guinea, 762 

New Hampshire (U.S.), 517 

New Hebiides, 763 

New Jersey (U.S.), 516 

New Mexico, 736 

"New monarchy," The (in 
England), 312 

New Orleans, 525, 740 

New South Wales, 761, 762 

New Sweden, 516 

New York, 516, 517 

New Zealand, 764 

Newcomen (engineer), 569 

Newfoundland, 379, 498, 514, 
515, 518, 525, 726 

Newman, Cardinal, 593 

Ney, Marshal, 554, 559, 565 

Niagara, Fort, 520, 523 

Nicaea, 250, 286, 356, 359 

Nicaea, Council of, 173 

Nicaragua, 753 

Nice, 407, 466, 493, 544, 623 

Nicephorus Phocas, Em- 
peror, 243 

Nicholas I. of Russia, 631, 632, 
633, 634, 637, 640 

Nicholas II. ot Russia, 636 

Nicholas II., Pope, 234 

Nicholas V., Pope, 338, 339, 
360, 367, 372 

Nicias (Athens), 103-105 

Nicomedes, 150 

Nicomedia, 171 

Niebelttngenlied, The (Ger- 
many), 293 

Niger Coast Protectorate, 705 

Niger (river), 699, 700 



Index 



733 



Niger territory, 701, 704, 705 

Nihilism, 635 

Nile, 6, 7 

Nile, Upper, 700 

Nineb (Nineveh), 22, 23, 26, 66 

Ningpo (China), 648 

Ninian, St., 201 

"Ninth Thermidor," The 
(France), 543 

Nipal (Nepaul), 667 

Nisibis, 6f, 68 

Nizam of the Deccan (Hyder- 
abad), 658, 660, 664, 665, 675 

Nizza(Nice). See Nice 

Nonconformists, 476, 481, 581, 
582 

Nore, The, 549 

Noricum, 160 

Norman Conquest, 224, 266 

Normandy, Duchy of, 218, 268 

Normans, 218, 253, 283 

North Briton, The (news- 
paper), 550 

Northampton, Assize of, 269 

Northbrook, Lord (Viceroy of 
India), 674 

"Northerners," The (U.S)., 739 

Northmen in Ireland, 200, 
227. See Danes. 

Northmen (Norsemen, Nor- 
mans), 215, 216, 217, 229 

Northumbria, 195, 197, 203, 
219, 220, 224 

North-West Fur Company 
(America), 518, 725 

North- West Territories (Can- 
ada). 724, 725 

Nortb- Western Provinces (In- 
dia), 668 

Norway, 229, 276, 278, 419, 420, 
568, 618 

Norwich, 266 

Nott, General, 669 

Nottingham, 579 

Nova Carthago (Spain), 141 

Nova Scotia (or Acadie), 498, 
517, 518, 524, 724 

Novgorod, 229, 324, 325, 363 

Novi Homines (Rome), 129 

Nubia, 689, 694 

Numidia, 148 

Nunez de Balboa, 379 

NunoTristao, 354 

Nupe, Sultan of (West Africa), 
704, 705 

Nilrnberg (Nuremberg), 290 

Niirnberg, " Religious 
Peace " of, 403 

Nyassaland, 712 



O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, 396 
Occam (Ockham, William), 264 
O'Connell, Daniel, 586, 5^7 
Octaviinus, 157, 158. See 

Augustus Caesar 
Odaenathus, 169 
O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel, 

460 
O'Donnell, Marshal (Spain), 
^694 

O'Donnells, The, 315 
Odovaker (Odoacer), 178, 180 
Odysseus, 71 
Offa, King of Mercia, 197, 202 



Offa's Dyke, 197 

Ohio (Wabash) river, 516 

Oil Rivers (West Africa), 701, 

7°S 
Olat II. of Norway, 230, 277 
Olaf Tryggveson of Norway, 

230 
Oldcastle, Sir John (Lord 

Cobham), 308 
Oldenburg, 610 
Olivarez (Spain), 462, 465 
OlmiHzconference(Germanv), 

6.8 
Olympia, 76 
Olympiads, 76 
Olympian Festival (Olympic 

Games), 76, 77 
Olynthiac orations, The 

(Demosthenes), icg 
Ol} nthus, 1C9 
Oman (Arabia), 681 
Omar, Caliph, 206, 207, 678, 687 
O'Neill, Hugh (Earl ol Ty- 
rone), 419 
O'Neills, The (Earls cf 

Tyrone), 227, 315, 396 
Ontario (lake), 722, 723 
O^hir, 42 
Oporto, 528, SS9 
Optimalcs, The (Rome), 129 
Oracle of Delphi, 51 
Orange Free State (Africa), 

7°i. 715 
Orders m Council (British), 

_ 557. 729 

Orders of Knighthood, 257 

Ordovices, The, 192 

Oregon (U.S.), 737 

Oribe, General (Buenos 

Ayres), 755 
Orissa (India), 661, 674 
Orkhan, Sultan, 357 
Orkneys, 216, 223, 229, 315, 413 
Orleans, 177, 323, 602 
Ormond, Duke of, 476 
Ormond, Earl of, 396 
Ormonde, The (Ireland), 315, 

3*6, 317 
Orodcs I., 62, 64, 65 
Orseolo II. (LiOj.e), 248 
Orsini family, The, 295 
Orsini, Felice, 622 
Oscar II of Sweden, 577, 618 
Osman Digna (Soudan;, 696 
Ostia, 156 

Ostraci-m (Athens), 87 
Ostrogoths, The, 174, 175, 180, 

181, 184 
Oswald of Northumbria, 197, 

201 
Oswego, Fort (North 

America), 520 
Oswin of Northumbria, 197 
Othman, Sultan, 207, 356, 358 
Otho, Emperor (Rome), 165 
Otho of Greece, 630 
Ottawa (Canada), 723 
Otto I. of Germany, 231 
Otto II. of Germany, 246 
Olto IV. of Germany, 271, 290 
Ottocar, King of Bohemia, 33 > 
Ottoman Turks, 356, 357, 358, 

529, 691 
Oudh (India), 665, 673 
Oudney (African traveller), 

699 



Outram, Sir James (India), 
669 

Ovid (poet), 159 

Oxenstierna (Swedish states- 
man), 4ss 

Oxford, 368, 481 

' ' Oxford Movement," The, 593 

Oxford, University of, 371 



Pacific Railway (U.S.), 745 
Pacorus of Parthia, 65 
Pactolus (river), 49 
Padua, 247, 295, 341, 368 
Pakenham, General, 729 
Palatinate, Rhenish or Lower, 

45ii 457, 49 2 
Palatine Hill (Rome), 165 
Pale, The (IrtLnd), 315, 317, 

394-396 
Paleologus, Michael (Greek 

emperor), 287 
Palestine, 67 
Palmerston, Lord, 731 
Palmyra, 163 
Palos (Spain), 379 
Panatlicnaca, The (Athens), 

76 
Pannonia, 160, 173, 181 
Panormus 'Palermo), 45 
Paoli (Corsica), 526, 532 
Papal State?, 532, 547, 562, 624 
Paphlagonia, 50 
Papineau (Canada), 722 
Paraguav, 755. 756 
Paramaribo, 759 
Paris, 218, 368, 538, 540, 603, 604 
Parish Councils Act (1894), 

583 
Parker, Admiral Sir Hyde, $49 
Parma (city and state), 533, 544, 

566, 621, 623 
Parliament, Full power of 

British, 480 
Parma, Prince (Duke) of 426, 

442, 445, 449, 473. See Parn- 

ese, Alexander 
Parnassus, Mount, 76 
Parnell, Chai les Stewart, 588, 

589, 59i 
Paropamisus (Hindu Kusli) 

mountains, 52 
Parsis, The, 52, 679 
Parthenon, Ihe (Athens), 76, 

530 
Parthenopaean Republic, The 

(Naples), 345 
Parthia, Panhians, 55, 58-69, 

112 
" Partition of Africa," 701 
Parysatis, Queen (Persia), 58 
Paschal II., Pope, 235, 257 
Paskevitch, Marshal, 633, 639 
Passau, Convention of, 404 
Patna, 660 

Patricians, The (Rome), 125 
Patrick, St., 199 
Paul, St., 37, 160 
Paul III., Pope, 403, 407, 414, 

428 
Paul IV., Pope, 458 
Paul V., Pope, 465 
Paul I. of Russia, 545, 549 
Paulinus, Bishop, 202 



7 8 4 



Index 



Paulus Diaconus, 213 

Pausanias (antiquary), 93 

Pausanias (Spartan general), 
97 

Pavia, 295, 406 

Pazzi plot, The (Florence), 297 

"Peace, Religious," The 
(Germany), 404. See Augs- 
burg 

Peaces. See Treaties 

Pedro II. of Brazil, 620, 75s 

Pedro II. of Portugal, 528 

Pedro V. of Portugal, 620 

Pedro, Dom, I. of Portugal, 
758 

Peel, Sir Robert, 584, 730 

" Peep-o'-Day Boys " (Ire- 
land), 551 

Pegu, 667, 672 

Peisistratus, 86 

Pekin, 646, 649 

Pelasgians (Pelasgi), 72 

Pelaya (Pelagius), 209 

Pelissier, Marshal, 693 

Pelopidas, 107, 108 

Peloponnesus, Peloponne- 
sians, 71, 73, 106, 108, no, 
in 

Penang (Prince of Wales 
Island), 683 

Penda, King of Merc'a, 197 

Pennsylvania, 517, 742 

Pentelicus, Mount, 92 

Pepin (Pipin), 183 

Pepin of Heristal, 191, 210, 
211 

Pepin the Small, 191 

Peraea, 36 

Percies of Northumberland, 
308 

Percy, Earl of Northumber- 
land, 314 

Percy " Hotspur," 314 

Perestrello (navigator), 353 

Pergamus, 113, 185 

Periander, 380 

Pericles, 94, 99, 102, 118 

Pericles, Age of, 99, 100 

Periaci, The (Sparta), 81 

Peripatetic School, 120 

Persepolis, 56, in, 112 

Perseus of Macedonia, 116 

Persia, Ancient, Persians, 15, 
53-58, 60, 169 

Persia, Mediaeval, 186, 187, 
207, 677, 678 

Pers a, Modern, 504, 679, 681 

Persian Gulf, 112 

Perth, 201 

Peru, Peruvians, 385, 386, 753, 
754 

Perugia, 296 

Peschiera, 623 

Peshawur, 656 

Pes/iwas, The (India), 658, 
662, 664, 665 

Pesth, 469, 613 

Peter the Great of Russia, 499, 
5co, 502, 504 

Peter III. of Russia, 513 

"Peter the Hermit" of 
Amiens, 249 

Peter des Roches, 273 

Peterborough, 210 

" Peterloo," Field of (Man 
Chester), 578 



Peter's, St. (Rome), 391 
" Peter's Pence." 224 
Petersburg (U.S.), 743 
Petition of Right, 459 
Petrarch, 368, 370, 373 
Pharisees, Tne, 35 
Pharos (Alexandria), 113 
Phidias, 76, 94, 117 
Philadelphia (Asia Minor), 358 
Philadelphia (U.S.), 533, 728, 

745 
Philip, Captain (Australia), 

761 
Philip of Anjou, 494. See 

Philip V. of Spa'n 
Philip of Burgundy, 319, 320, 

392 

Philip Augustus of France, 
252, 27^, 271, 279, 280, 318 

Philip IV. of France (le Bel), 
259, 3°i. 3191 320, 321, 337 

Philip VI. of France, 321 

Philip, Count of Hesse (Elec- 
tor of Saxony), 402-404 

Philip II. of Macedon, 58, 1 8, 
109, no 

Philip V. of Macedon, 116 

Philip of the Netherlands, 433 

Philip, Duke of Orleans (Re- 
gent) 525 

Philip II. of Spain, 408, 421, 
423, 425, 426, 429, 433-437, 
438-445. 449i 462. 465 

Philip II 1 ol Spain, 445, 461, 

465 
Philip IV. of Spain, 462, 465 
PhilipV. of Spain, 494, 497, 527 
Philippa of Hainault, 303 
" Philippe Egalite " Duke of 

Orleans, 595 
Philippi, 160 
Philippics, The, of Cicero, 

157; of Demosthenes, 109 
Philippine Isles, 380, 483, 6-5, 

762 
Philistines, The, 29 
Philopoemen of Megalopolis, 

115, 116 
Phocis, 71, 76, 1C9 
Phocaea, 73 
Phoenicia, Phoenicians, The, 

17, 38-44. 58. 64 
Phormio (Athenian general), 

102 
Photius, Patriarch ot Con- 
stantinople, 243 
Phraates II. of Parthia, 61, 65 
Phraortes (Fravartish) of 

Media, 27 
Phrygia, 51, 52 
Piacenza, 294 
Picenum, 124 
Picton, General, 752 
Picts, The, 193, 200, 201 
Piedmont, 466, 531, 533, 553, 

621 
Pierce, President, 737 
Piers Gaveston, 302 
Pietermaritzburg, 715 
" Pilgrimage of Grace," The, 

410 
Pindar, 77, in, 121 
Pindarees, The (India), 666, 

667 
Pinzon (or Pincon) (navi- 

gato ), 379, 757 



Piraeus, The (Athens), 95, 98, 

99, 102, 106 
Pisa, Pisans, 245, 246, 251, 253, 

256, 294, 296, 375, 388, 389 
Pitt, William, the Elder (Fail 

of Chatham), 480, 512, 521- 

523 
Pitt, William, the Younger, 

548, 55i. 552, 554, 555 
Pittsburg (U.S.), 523 
Pius IV., Pope, 429 
Pius V., Pope, 407, 429 
Pius VI., Pope, 514, 533, 545 
Pius VII., Pope, 546, 554, 564, 

625 
Pius VIII , Pope, 626 
Pius IX., Pope, 611, 621, 622, 

626 
Pizarro, 385 
Placentia, 132, 139 
Plantagenet kings, 268, 274 
Plataea, Plataeans, 88, 91, 92, 

94, 96. 97, !02, 117 
Plato, 118, 119 
Pla itus, 159 
Plebeians (Rome), 125 
Podesta, The (Italy), 295 
Poggio Bracciolini, 370 
Poitou, 271, 304 
Poland, 326, 466, 467, 499, 5"5, 

506, 566, 633, 634 
Polemarchus (Archon) 

(Athens) 84 
Polignac, Prince de, 594 
Polk, President (U.S ), 736 
Pollock, Genera) (India), 669 
Polotsk, 325 
Polycarp, 177 
Polygnotus, 94 
Polynesia, 762 

Pomare, Queen (Tahiti), 763 
Pombal, Marquis de, 528, 529, 

758 
Pomerania, 290, 326, 363, 456, 

457, 566 
Pompadour, Marquise de, 525, 

526 
Pompeii, 165 
Pompey (Pompeius Magnus), 

35, 62, 151-155 
Pomptine (Pontine) Marshes 

(Italy), 156 
Ponce de Leon, 379 
Pondicherry, 659, 66c, 662 
Poniatowski, Pnnce Joseph, 

5"6, 507 
Ponteiract (Pomfret) Castle, 

305, 410 
Pontiac (Indian chief), 720 
Pontifcx Maximus, The 

(Rome), 130 
Pontius Pilate, 37 
Pontius ol Samnium, 135, 136 
Pontus, 150, 151 
Poona, 658 
Popes, The, 178, 181 
Porcius Festus, 37 
Port Royal (Annapolis) 

(Nova Scotia), 518 
Porto Rico, 751 
Portugal, Portuguese, 349, 

350, 388, 462, 465, 494, 528, 

558, 559, 56i, 620, 659, 681, 

682, 685, 686, 701, 719, 757, 

758 
Porus, King (India), 112 



Index 



785 



Posen, 566 
Potidaea, 109 

Poynings, Sir Edward (Ire- 
land), 395 
Poynings' Laws or Acts, 395, 

55i 
Praetor, The (Rome), 126, 127 
Praetorians, Praetorian 

Guards (Rome), 163, 164, 168 
Pragmatic Sanction, The, 508, 

5°9 
Prague, 330, 335, 336, 368 
Pratt, Chiel-Justice (Lord 

Camden), 550 
Pretender, Elder (Stuart), 480 
Prim, General (Spain), 619, 694 
Printing, 375 

Probus, Emperor (Rome), 169 
Prome (Burma), 667, 672 
Propontis (Sea of Marmara), 

357 
Proprae'ors (Rome), 127 
Protestant Union (Germany), 

45o, 45i 
Protestants, Protestantism, 

39 8 > 403. 417. 420, 450 
Provence, 214, 324 
Provisions of Oxford, 273 
Prudentius, 189 
Prusias, King of Bithynia, 142 
Prussia, 259, 500, 506, 507, 509, 

S39. 540, S43> 549, 55°, 557, 

560, 562, 563, 566, 569, 606, 

608, 610, 611, 617, 734 
Psamatik (Psammitichus) I. 

(Egypt), 13, 27, 50 
Psamatik (Psammitichus) II. 

(Egypt), 14 
Ptolemies, The (Egypt), 113 
Ptolemy Soter (Egypt), 33 
Ptolemy I. (Egypt), 113 
Ptolemy II. (Egypt), 113 
Public Health Act, 583 
Publicani, The, 127 
Puebla (Mexico), 748 
Punjab, The, 60, 112, 655, 656, 

670, 672, 673 
Puritans, The, 412, 460, 476 
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 48, 

136, i37 
Pythian Festival, The 

(Greece), 76, 77 

Q- 

" Ouadrilateral,' The (Italy), 

624 
Onaestors (Rome), 127 
Quakers (or Society ol 

Friends), 481 
Quebec, 515, 516, 518-521, 523, 

524, 720 
Quebec Act, The, 72^, 721 
Quebec (province), 723 
Queen Anne's Bounty, 479 
Queensland, 761 
Quintilian, 189 

R. 

Racine, 484 

Radama I. of Madagascar, 717 

Radicals, 577 

Raetia, 160 

Raffles Sir Stamford, 683 

Railroads, 569 



Rajputana, 657 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 418, 459, 

515, 743, 759 
Ramessu (Ramesses II ), 11, 

14, 56 
Ramessu (Ramesses III.), 12 
Ranjit Singh, 666, 670 
Rangoon, 667, 672, 673 
Ravaillac, 428 
Ravenna, 119, 180, 181, 183 
Raymond of Toulouse, 250 
Raymond VI. of Toulouse, 281 
Raymond VII. of Toulouse, 

281 
Rebellion of 1641 (Ireland), 461 
Rebellion of i798(lreland), 551 
Reconstruction Act (U.S.), 

744 
Red Republicans (Paris), 603 
Red River rebellion, 726 
Reform Act, First, 579 
Reform Act, Second, 579 
Reform Act, Third, 580 
Reformation, The, 233, 366, 

397-404, 408, 409, 410, 418, 

421, 434 
Regensburg (Ratisbon), 290 
Regulating Act of 1773 (India), 

661 
Rehoboam, 12, 31 
Reichstadt, Duke of, 561 
" Reign of Terror" (Fiance), 

541-543 
Remigius, 190 
Renaissance (Revival of 

Learning), 367, 376 
Republic, Second, in France, 

595 
Republic, Third, in France, 

601 , 693 
Republic of the Seven Ionian 

Isles, 567 
Republicans (U.S.), 737 
Requesens, 440, 441 
Retief, Peter (South Africa), 

715 
Retreat of the Ten Thousand 

Greeks, 58 
Reuchlin, John, 372 
Revolution, French (First), 

536, 571, 627 
Revolution of July (France), 

594 
Revolution, French (Third), 

595 
R volutwnary Tribunal 

(Paris), 541 
Rheims, 190, 323 
Rhine, Confederacy of, 556 
Rhode Island, 517 
Rhodes, 73, 257,466, 691. See 

Knights of St. John 
Rhodes, Cecil J., 712 
Rhodesia, 712, 713 
Rhyddlan Castle (Wales), 299 
Rialto, The, 246, 247 
" Ribbonmen " (Ireland), 590 
Richard I. of England (Cjeur 

de Lion), 251,* 252, 253, 258, 

270 
Richard II. of England, 305, 

.3 I 6 
Richard III. of England 

(Duke of Gloucester), 313 
Richard de Clare, Earl of 

Pembroke, 274 



Richard Plantagenet, Duke 

of York, 310, 313, 317 
Richelieu, 233, 448, 453, 455, 

456, 458, 461, 483 
Richmond (Virginia), 740, 741, 

742, 743 
Ridley, Bishop, 411 
Riel, Louis (Canada), 725, 726 
Rienzi (Nicoio de), 295 
Riga, 364 

Rights, Bill of, 478 
Rimini, 183 

Rio de Janeiro, 620, 758 
Rio de la Plata, 379 
Ripon, Marquis of (Viceroyof 

India), 676, 677 
Ripuarian Franks, 190 
" Ritualists," 593 
Rizzio, 417 
Robert, Duke of Normandy, 

250, 267 
Robert Fitz-Stephen, 274 
Robert Grosseteste, 273 
Robert II. of Scotland, 314 
Robert III. of Scotland, 314 
Roberts, Sir Frederick (Lord ), 

675 
Robespierre, 538, 541. 542, 543 
Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord 

Rosmead), 713 
Rochefort, 485 
Rochelle, La, 423, 425 
Rochester, 266 
Roderick the Goth, 208, 209 
Rodney, Sir George, 534 
Rodrigo (Ruy Diaz), 241 
Rollo of Normandy (Rolf the 

Ganger), 2r7, 218 
Roman Empire, 158, 178 
Roman Republic, 122, 125 
Roman Republic, Decline and 

fall, 146-158 
Roman Republic, Modern, 545 
Romance Languages, The, 178 
Romanoff, Michael, of 

Russia, 469 
Rome, Ancient, 45, 59, 116, 

134, 164, 176, 177, 180, 193 
Rome, Ancient (army), 133, 

i37 
Rome, Anc.ent (buildings), 

132 
Rome, Ancient (camps), 134 
Rome, Ancient (haracter), 

131, 132 
Rome, Ancient (public works 

and roads), 132, 133, 194 
Rome (religion), 130, 131 
"Rome, King of" (Reich- 
stadt, Due de), 561, 596 
Rome, Mediaeval, 295, 405 
Rome, Modern, 545, 621, 624 
Rome, Sack of, 406 
Romilly, Sir Samuel, 584 
Roncesvalles, 212 
Rooke, Sir George, 495, 499 
Roon, Count von, 6:9 
Rosas, J uan, of Buenos Ayres, 

755 
Rose, Sir Hugh (Lord Strath- 

nairn), 674 
Rouen, 217, 309, 323, 602 
Roumania, 569, 04r, 642 
Roumelia, Eastern, 641, 642 
Rousseau, 536 
Rowan (Irish patriot), 551 



786 



Index 



Roxburgh, 413 

Royal Burghs (Scotland), 275 

Royal Niger Company, 704 

Rubicon (river), 155 

Rudolf II. of Germany, 450, 451 

Rudolf of Hapsburg, 292, 330 

"Running the blockade" 

(U.S.), 740 
Rupert, Prince, 460, 477, 518 
Russell, Lord John, 698 
Russell, Lord William, 476 
Russell, Sir Charles (Lord), 

733 
Russia, 313, 324, 325, 354, 364, 

467, 468, 469, 472, 473, 50 ,503, 

506, 507, 510, 549, 554, 556, 566, 

568, 606, 631 643, 651, 652, 679, 

734 
Rutupise (Richborough), 192, 

194 
Ruyter, Admiral de, 475 



S. 



Sabines, 125 

"Sacred Band," The 
( Thebes), 101, no 

Sadducees, 35 

Sadi-Carnot, President 
(France), 605 

Saguntum (Spain), 139 

Sahara, The, 689, 699, 7 1 

Said, Port, 690 

Saigon, 686 

St. Arnaud, Marshal, 693 

St. David, Fort (India;, 659 

St. Domingo (Haiti), 543. See 
Haiti 

St. George, Fort (India), 659, 
665 

St. Helena, 719 

St. Jean d'Acre, 690 

St. John's (Newfoundland), 

727 
St. Just (France), 541, 543 
St. Lawrence (river and gulf), 

379. 5i4, 5i7, 518, 524, 525 
St. Paul de Loanda, 716 
St. Petersburg, 5 4, 635 
Sais, 13 
Salah-ed-din (Saladin), 251, 

252, 687 
Salamanca, 369 
Salamis, Isle of, 84 
Sale, Sir Robert, 669, 670 
SalernOj 235 
Salian i ranks, The, 189 
Salic law, 321 
Salisbury, Earl of, 322 
Salisbury, Lord, 589 
Salonica, 641 
Salvador, San, 753 
Salzburg, 566 
Samaria, 24,37, 38 
Samarkand, 355, 638, 656 
Samnites, 48, 124, 136, 140, 150 
Samoa, 763 
Samos, 73, 100 
Sampson, W. T., 749 
Samuel (the prophet), 29 
San Domingo (Haiti), 379 
San Francisco, 736, 745 
Sancho of Navarre, 240 
Sancho 1. of Portugal, 350 
Sancho "the Valiant" of 
Castile, 342 



Sanctuary, Right of, 265 
Sandili (South Africa), 711 
Sandwich Islands, 763 
Sanitary reform 583 
Santa Anna, President 

(Mexico), 735, 736, 747 
Santa Cruz, 475 
Santa Domingo (republic), 

75i, 752 
Santarem, 351, 462 
Santiago (Chili), 757 
Sapor I. (Persia), 169, 677 
Sapor II. (the Great) (Persia), 

677 
Sappho, 121 
Saracenic art, 239 
Saracens, 145, 188, 233, 207, 

208, 239, 212, 243, 246, 251, 

254 
Sarawak, 684 
Sardinia, 139, 498, 531, 533, 544, 

565, 566, 623 
Sardis, 49, 50, 51, 56, 57 
Sarepta, 41 
Sargon, 24, 25, 31 
Sarmatae, 167 
Sassanian dynasty (Persia), 

207 
Sassanidae (Persia), 677, 678 
Saul, King, 33 
Saunders, Admira 1 , 523 
Sautre, William, 308 
Savannah, 743 
Savonarola, 298, 389 
Savoy, 466, 494, 497, 531, 544, 

56s, 623 
Savoy, Duke of, 492 
Savoy, House of, 533 
Savoy Palace (London), 305 
Savoy, Prince Eugene of, 493, 

494, 495. 496 
Saxe-Coburg, 610 
Saxe-Coburg, Prince Leopold 

of, 578 
Saxon pirates, 193 
Saxons, 16-^, 174, 195, 201, 212 
Saxony, 51^, 556, 566, 567, 599, 

606, 609, 610, 611 * 

Scanderbeg, 36r, 362 
Scandinavia, Scandinavians, 

161, 215, 229, 317 
Scania (Sweden), 363, 365, 421 
Scharnhorst, Baron von, 562, 

563 
Schleswig, 195, 419, 456, 609 
Schleswig-Holstein, 610, 616 
Schleswig-Holstein question, 

617 
Schmalkaldic League, The, 

4°3 
" Schoolmen," The, 369, 370 
Schwarzenberg, Prince, 6.>8 
Schweidnitz, 512, 513 
Schwerin, Marshal, 510 
Schwyz, 332 
Scindia, 664, 665 
Scipio, Publius Cornelius 

(Afncanus), 141, 142 
Scipio, Publius (Africanus 

Minor), 144, 145 
Scone, 201, 275, 300 
Scoti, The, 198, 200 
Scotland, 274, 275, 299-302, 412, 

417, 459, 47S, 478, 480, 53°, 

583, 592 

Scots, 193, 230, 201 



Scott, General (U.S.), 736 
"Scramble for Africa," The, 

700 
Scut age, 269 
Scyths (Scythians^, 26, 27, 50, 

57 
Sebastian del Cano, 380 
Sebastian of Portugal, 464, 465 
Sebastiano del Piombo, 373 
"Sections," The (Paris), 541, 

543 
Seditious Meetings Act, 548 
Segesta, 48 
Sejanus (Rome), 163 
Selden, John, 460 
Seleucia, 61, 66, 67, 114 
Seleucidae, The, 44, 49, 114 
Seleucus, 114 

Selim I. of Turkey, 471, 688 
Selinus, 46 
Seljuk Turks, 244, 250, 283, 

286, 356 358 
Selkirk, Earl of, 725, 726 
Semiramis, 20 
Semitic race, The, 3 
Senegal, The, 702 
Senegambia, 706 
Sennacherib, 22, 25, 26, 31, 43 
Sepharvaim (two Sippars), 18 
September massacres (Paris), 

540 
Septimania, 209 
SeptimiusSeverus, Emperor, 

67, 168 
Sergul (Calneh), 19 
Seringapatam, 663, 664 
Servetus, 409 
Servia, Servians, 284, 353, 358, 

361, 569, 641, 642 
Seti I. (Sethos), 10, n, 14 
Settlement, Act of, 478 
" Seven Bishops," The, 477 
Seven United Provinces, 442, 

444. See Holland 
Seville, 283 
Sextus Pompeius, 155 
Sforzas, The, 296, 297, 407 
Shabak (Sabaco), 13 
Shatter, W. R., 749 
Stialmaneser L, 22 
Shalmaneser 11., 23 
Shalmaneser IV., 24, 43 
Shamyl (Circassia), 632, 633 
Shanghai, 648 
Sharp, Archbishop, of St. 

Andrews, 476 
Sharp, Granville, 567 
Shere Ali (Afghanistan), 675 
Sheridan, General (U.S.), 744 
Sherman, General (U.S.), 742, 

744 
Shetlands, The, 223, 229, 315, 

413 
Shintoism (Japan), 650 
Shire-moot, 222 
Shishak, 12, 31 
Shogun (Tycoon) (Japan), 

653, 651, 652 
Shrewsbury, 197, 276 
Shumir, People of, 16, 19 
Shushan (Susa), 19, 27, 56, 

112 
Siam, 489, 655, 667, 681 
S beria, 468 
Sicilian expedition (Athens) 

103 



Index 



787 



Sicily, 49, 104, 138, 139, 185, 
243, 291, 339, 497, 531, 533, 
545, 567 
Sicyon, 80, 83 
Sidney, Algernon, 476 
Sidney, Sir Henry, 418 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 444 
Sidon, Sidonians, 24, 39 41, 

4?, 43, 44, 255 
Siena, 296, 375 
Sierra Leone, 701, 702, 704 
Sieur de la Salle, 516 
Sigismund, Emperor of Ger- 
many, 327 331, 335, 337, 401 
Sigismund I. ot Poland, 466 
Sigismund II. of Poland, 466 
Sigismund III. of Poland, 467 
Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, 228 
Sikhs, 1 he, 666, 669-673 
Silesia, 5^9, 511, 512, 513 
Silistria, 639 
Silures, The, 192 
Simla, 673 

Simnel, Lambert, 393, 394 
Simon de Montfort, 273, 281 
Simon of Sudbury, 305 
Sind (Scinde), 655, 656, 657, 669 
Sindhia of Gwalior, 658 
Singapore, 683, 684 
Singhalese, The, 682, 683, 684 
Sinope, 362 

Sipahis (Sepoys), 672, 673 
Sippar, 18, 27 
Sirmium, 171 
Sivaji (India), 657 
Six Acts (1819), 578 
Sixtus IV., Pope, 297, 344 
Sixtus V., Pope, 429 
" Skalds," The, 230 
Skeffington, Sir William, 356 
Skinner, Major, 683 
Skobeleff, General, 638, 641 
Slavs, 70, 187, 188, 212, 229 
Smerwick, 418 
Smith, Sir Harry, 710, 711 
Smolensk, 324, 363 
Smyrna, 73 356, 358 
Sobieski, John, King of Po- 
land, 492, 501 
Sobor, The (Russia), 469, 5^4 
Socialism, 572 
Socialism (Germany), 611 
Society of Jesus, 413, 431, 532. 

See Jesuits 
Socrates, 103, 107, 118, 119 
Sokoto (Africa), 701, 704 
Solemn League and Cove- 
nant, 460 
Soliman of Turkey, 358, 470, 

471 
Solomon, King, 12, 30 
Solon, 84, 85, 86, 87, 107 
Somers, Sir George, 751 
Somerset, Duke of, 310 
Somerset, Protector, 414 
Sonderbitnd, The (Switzer 

land), 614 
Son-tai, 686 
Sophocles, 97 
Soubise, Marshal, 511 
Soudan, The, 687, 689, 69-', 695, 

696, 699, 701 
Soudan, Eastern, 695 
Soulouque, Emperor of Haiti, 

75i 
Soult, Marshal, 554, 559, 561 



Spain, 139, 141, 142, 179, 185, 
1S6, 188, 2j8, 342, 343, 368, 
421, 424, 445, 446, 462, 463, 

465, 475, 483, 486, 525, 528, 
534, 535, 541, 543, 546, 549, 
554, 561, 618, 685, 692, 701, 
728, 748, 749, 757, 762 

Spanish Armada, 449 
"Spanish Fury," The (Ant- 

werp) 441 
Sparta, Spartans, 74, 80, 82-84, 

88, 90, 96-98, 101, 105, 107, 1 ->8, 

no, 115, 116 
Spartacus (Rome), 152 
Spartiatae, The (Spaita), 8o, 

81^ 82, q6 ; 115 
Speier (Spires), 290, 492 
Speier, Diet at, 402 
Speke, Captain, 700 
Sphacteria, 102, 1 15 
Spinola, 445-448, 451 
Stadacona, 514 
Stanley, H. M., 700 
Star-Chamber, The, 460 
" State-Rights " (U.S.), 738 
States of the Church (ltaly\ 

466, 567 
States-General (France), 461, 

527, 536 
Steam-engine, 569 
Stein, Baron von (Prussia), 

562, 563 
Stephen of England, 268 
Stephen, St., of Hungary, 326, 

327 
Stephen III., Pope, 191 
Stephenson, George, 570 
Stettin, 500 
Stewart, General Sir Herbert, 

696 
Stiiicho, 176 
Stirling, 275, 310 
Stoa Poikile, The (Athens), 

94, 120 
Stockholm, 419, 423 
Stoic school, 120 
S rachan, Sir Richard, 567 
Strafford, Earl of, 41 
Straits Settlements, 683 
Strasburg, 486, 488, 494, 6.1, 

603 
Strategi (Athens), 87 
Stratticiyde (Scotland), 197, 

2DI 

Stuart, James Edward 

(elder " Pretender "), 480 
Stuart line of Scotland, 314 
Stuart, General (Confede- 
rate), 740 
Stukeley, Sir Thomas, 465 
Styria, 330, 332 
Suakin, 695, 696 
Suevi, The, 16:,, 173, 176, 189 
Suez Canal, 585, 6.5, 690 
Siiffetcs, The (Carthage), 48 
Suffolk, Earl of, 322 
Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, 

279 
Suliotes, The, of Epirus, 627, 

628 
Sulla, 62, 150, 152 
Sully, Duke of, 427, 461 
Sumatra, 683-685 
Sumner, Charles (U S.), 731 
Sumter, Fort (U.S.), 739 
Supremacy, Act of, 418 



Suraj-ud-Daula (Surajah 

Dovvlah) (Bengal), 660 
Surat, 659 

Surenas (Parthia), 62, 63 
Surinam, 759 
Susiana, 60 
Sutlej (river) (Punjab), 666, 

670 
Suwarof (or Suwarrow), 

Marshal, 505, 507, 545 
Swabia, 231 
Sweden, 229, 277, 317, 420, 

456, 458, 467, 487, 499, 5°°, 

549, 554, 558, 562, 568, 574, 

618 
Sweyn (Svend) of Denmark, 

223, 224, 229 
Swiss Confederation, 566 
Switzerland, 392,408, 445, 457, 

566, 574, 614 
Switzerland, Rise of, 332-334 
Sybaris, 125 
Sydney (Australia), 761 
Symington (engineer), 569 
Syracuse, 47, 8p, 103, 104 
Syria, 6d, 6r, 62, 64, 67, 113, 

151, 206, 355, 545, 689 

T. 

Tacitus, 159, 163, 192 
Taharka, 27 
Tahiti, 672 

Tahiti Archipelago, 763 
Tai-ping revolt (China), 648 
Tait, Archbishop, of Canter- 
bury, 582 
Taku forts (China), 649 
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, 

323 
fallard, Marshal, 497 
Tamerlane (or Timour 

Tartar), 359, 637, 656, 679 
Tancred, 217, 250 
Tanganyika, Lake, 700 
Tanis (Egypt), 12, 13 
Tara (Ireland), 228 
Tarentum, 125, 136, 137 
Tarif(Tarifa), 208 
Tarik, 208, 209 
Tarsus, 160 
Tartars, 505, 646 
Tartars Manchoo, 647 
Tashkend, 638 
Tasmania, 762 
Taunton, 198 
Taurus Mountains, 52 
Taylor, General Zachary 

(US.), 736 
Tchad, Lake, 699 
Tegea, 84 
Teheran, 680 
Tehrak (Tirhakal, 13 
Tekke-Turkomans, 638 
Temple Church (London), 259 
Temple, Sir William, 487 
Tenasserim, 667 
Tennes, 43 

Tennessee (U.S.), 728, 739, 742 
"Tenth of August " (Paris), 

54o 
Terence, 159 
Terentius Varro (Consul) 

(Rome), 140 
"Terrorists,' The (Russia), 

6 35> 636 



788 



Index 



Test Act, 481 
Tetzel, John, 399, 400 
Teutoburger-wald, 162 
Teutonic Knights, 259, 260, 

326, 336, 363 
Teutonic peoples, 148, i6:>, 174 
Teutons, The, 70, 148, 149 
Tewfik of Egypt, 690 
Texas, 736, 739 
Texel, 549 

" Theatines," The, 428 
Thebans (Greek), 87, 96 
Thebau of Burma, 676 
Thebes (Egypt), 8, 9, 11, 13, 

1 Si 27, 
Thebes (Greece), 97, 104, 107- 

iii 
Thegns (Thanes), 195 
Themistocles, 90, 91, 94, 97, 

9 9 , 99 
Theobald, King of Navarre, 

254 
Theocritus, 114 
Theoderic, 177, 178 
Theoderic the Great, 180 
Theodora, Empress, 184, 185 
Theodore of Abyssinia, 698, 

699 
Theodore Gaza, 370 
Theodore of Tarsus, 181, 202 
Theodosian Code (or Digest), 

186 
Theodosiu«, Emperor, 176 
Theodosius II., Emperor, 183 
Thera, 73 
Thesmothetae, The (Athens), 

84 
Thespiae, 96 
Thessalians, 108 
Thessalonica, 176, 359 
Thessaly, 71, 72, 74, 94, 109, 

116, 286, 358, 630 
Thiers, President (France), 

597, 604, 605 
"Thirteenth Vendemiaire " 

.(Paris), 543 
Thirty 'lyrants (at Athens), 

106 
Thoniond, Earl of (Ireland), 

396 
Thompson, Charles Powlett 

(Lord Sydenham), 723 
Thotmes I., 10 
Thotmes II., 10 
Thotmes III., 1 , n 
Thrace (Thraci ), 57, 109, 150, 

164, 358 
Thrasybulus (Athens), 107 
Three Rivers (Canada), 516 
Thucydides, 102, 121 
Thugs (India), 668 
Tiber (river), 125 
Tiberius, Emperor, 65, 159, 

161, 163 
Tiberius Gracchus (Rome), 

148 
Tibet, 644, 647, 655 
Tibur (ITvoli), 166 
Ticonderoga, 520, 521, 523, 534 
Tientsin, 649 

Tiers e'tat (Prance), 321, 537 
Tiglath-pileser I., 22 
Tiglath-pileser 11., 24, 43 
Tiglath-pileser III., 20 
Tigranes, 62, 150, 151 
Tigris, 61 



Tilly, Count, 45!, 452, 453, 454 
Timbuktu, 706 
Timoleon of Corinth, 47 
Tippoo (India), 663, 664, 665 
Tiridates, 60 
Tissaphernes, 105 
Titian, 373 

Titus, Emperor, 38, 65, 192 
Tlaxcalla (Mexico), 381 
Tlaxcallans, 382, 383 
JTmolus Mountains, 49 
Todleben, General, 641 
Tokio (Yedo) ( lapan), 652 
Toledo, 209, 236 
Toleration Act, 481 
Tolosa (Toulouse), 176 
Tonga, 763 

Tongking (Tonquin or Ton- 
kin), 685, 686 
Torquemada, 344 
Torres Vedras, Lines of, 559 
Torstenson, General, 456 
Toul, 404, 408, 457, 601 
Toulon, 485, 542, 554 
Toulouse, 209, 250, 282, 368. 

See Tolosa 
Touraine, 268, 270 
Tournai, 438 
Tours, 6di 

Tourville, Admiral, 492 
Toussaint (1'Ouverture), 750 
" Tracts for the Times," 593 
Trades-unions, 575 
Traitorous Correspondence 

Act, 548 
Trajan, Emperor, 66, 165 
Transvaal, 711 
Transvaal Republic, 701 
Transylvania, 501, 608, 613 
Treasonable Practices Act, 

548 
Treaties, Peaces, Conven- 
tions : — 

Abo, 500 

Amboise, 423 

Aix-la-Chapelle, 483, 487, 

5'9> 5i9 
Amiens, 552, 6S3, 710 
Antalcidas, 107 
" Asiento " Treaty, 498 
Augsburg, 457 
" Barrier " Treaty, 497 
Basle, 543 
Berlin, 614, 630, 643 
Breda, 7-2, 759 
Bretigny, 304 
Bucharest, 568, 638 
Cambrav, 4 6 
Campo Formio, 544, 555 
Carlovitz, 501, 530 
Cateau-Cambresis, 421, 466 
Constance, 289 
Dover, 487 
Dresden, 5^9 

Frankfurt-on-the-Main, 603 
Ghent, 730 
Gundamuk, 675 
Hubertusburg, 513 
Hunkiar-Skelessi, 639 
J assy, 5-5 
Kainardji, 505 
Kl jster-Zeven, Convention 

of, 511 
London (1832), 630 
London (1841), 640 
Luneville, 546 



\ 



Treaties, etc. {continued) : — 

Madrid, 405 

Methuen, 528 

Munster, 449, 483 

Nanking, 648 

Nicias, Peace of ("Fifty 
Years' Truce "), 103 

Nimeguen, 488 

Northampton, 302 

Oregon, 730 

Paris (1763), 524, 727 

Paris (1814), 719 

Paris (1815), 565 

Paris (1856), 640 

Passarowitz, 531 

Passau, 457 

Pekin, 649 

Pillnitz, 539 

Prague, 455, 610 > 

Pyrenees, 484 

Reciprocity Treaty (U.S. 
and Canada), 723 

Ryswick, 493, 517 

St. Germain-en-Laye, 423, 
516 

Stralsund, 365 

Tilsit, 556, 558 

Tientsin, 649 

Troyes, 309 

Utrecht, 497, 498, 518, 527, 531 

Verdun, 214 

Versailles, 535, 663, 702, 721, 
727, 728, 752 

Vervins, 427, 436 

Vienna, 561, 617 

Villafranca, 623 

Wallingford, 268 

Washington, 732, 745 

Wedmore, 220 

Westphalia, 456, 458 

Windsor, 351 

Zurich, 623 
Trebizond, 362 

Trent, Council ot, 403, 428, 437 
Treviso, 341 
Tribonian, 186 
Tiibunate (Rome), 128 
Trier(Treves),i7i,23o, 233, 290 
Trincomali, 683 
Trinidad, 379, 552, 752 
" Trinity House," The, 394 
Trinobantes, The, 191 
Triple Alliance, 487, 611 
Tripoli (Africa), 185, 258, 356, 

475- 485. 53 1 , 577. 691 692 
Tripolis (Phoenicia), 41, 44 
Tristao da Cunha, 387 
Triumvirate, First (Rome), 

154 
Triumvirate, Second, 157 
Tromp, Admiral van, 448, 475 
Trondhjem, 229 
" Troubles, Council of" (or 

" Council of Blood ' ) 

(Netherlands), 439 
Tudor Age, 392 
Tudor, Owen, 314 
Tudor sovereigns, 311 
Tugendbund (" League of 

Virtue ") (Germany), 563 
Tuileries, 540 
Tunis, 254, 255, 356, 407, 475, 

53i, 577. 691, 701 
Turanians, 19, 69 
Turenne, Marshal, 456, 484, 

486, 487, 488 



Index 



789 



Turgot, 527 

Turin, 466, 624 

Turkestan, 637, 638 

Turkey (after 1453), 362, 466, 

4671 473, 474! 502, 504, 505, 

5i3i 53°i S3ii 568, 630, 631, 

638, 639, 641. 691 
Turkomans, 637, 679 
Turks (Ottoman), 356, 362, 688. 

See Turkey 
Turks (Seljuk), 244, 356, 679 
Turks, 258, 287, 341 
Tuscany, 533, 562, 623 
Tuscany, Duchy of, 566 
Tyrants, The (Greece), 80 
Tyre, Tynans, 10, 20, 24, 39, 

41-44. 255 
Tyrol, 330, 544, 555, 561, 566 
Tyrone, Earl of (Ireland), 396 
Tyrtaeus (poet), 82, 83 

U. 

Uganda, 714 

" Uitlanders '' (Outlanders) 

(South Africa), 712 
Ujiji (Africa), 700 
Ukraine, 499 
Ulm, 290, 555 
Ulpian, 168 
Ulster, 200, 419, 460, 461, 551, 

5T, 59 2 
Umbria, Umbrians, 124, 135, 

136 
" Unigenitus," Papal "bull," 

532 
Union Act (Canada), 723 
Union Act (Ireland), 552, 587 
Union of Calmar, 277, 278, 317 
Union of England and Scot- 
land, 479 
United L in pi re Loyalists 

(Canada), 721 
" United Irishmen," 551 
United States, 558, 569, 576, 

692, 721, 727-747. See also 

America 
Unterwalden, 332 
Upsala, 277 
Ur, 18, 19 
Ur-bahu, 19 
Urban II., Pope, 249 
Uri, 332 
Uruguay, 755 
Usurtasen 111., 9 
Utah (U.S.), 737 
Utica, 45, 48 
Utrecht, Union of, 442 
Uzbegs (rurco-tartars), 637 



V. 

Valdivia, 757 
Valencia, 283 

Valenciennes, 43S, 439, 542 
Valentinian I., Emperor, 175 
Valerian, 168, 169, 677 
Valerius, Consul (Rome), 129 
Valois, House of, 321, 425, 426 
Valparaiso, 757 
Van Buren, President, 736 
Vancouver, Captain, 726, 763 
Vancouver Island, 724, 726 
Vandals, The, 169, 170, 173, 
175, 176, 177, 185, 186 



Varangian Guard, The (Con- 
stantinople), 230 
Varennes (France), 539 
Varus, Consul (Rome), 161, 

162 
Vasco da Gama, 352, 3S7, 714, 

716 
Vatican, The, 339 
Vatican Council, 626 
Vauban, 485, 486, 487, 488, 49?, 

493 
Vaudreuil, De (Canada), 518, 

519, 524 
Vendee, La (France), 543 
Venetia, 621, 624 
Venetian Republic, 544 
Venezuela, 753 
Venice, Venetians, 246, 247, 

251, 256, 260, 284, 285, 287, 

339, 340, 34i, 342, 3S3, 359, 

372, 375, 388, 390, 465, 466, 

529, 53i, 544- 566, 622 
Venta Belgarum (Winches- 
ter), 194 
Vendome, Marshal, Duke of, 

49-1, 495 
Vera Cruz, 381, 747, 748 
Verdun, 404, 408 
Verendryes, Les (explorers) 

518 
Vermont (U.S.), 728 
Verona, i8->, 295, 341 
Verres, Proconsul (Rome), 

i54 
Versailles, 489, 526, 537, 604, 

611, 633, 670 
" Version, Authorised " 

(Bible), 412 
Verulamium (St. Albans), 

194 
Vespasian, Emperor, 38, 105, 

192 
Vespucci, Amerigo, 387 
Vestal Virgins (Rome), 131 
Vesuvius, Mount, 165 
Veto Act (Scotland, 1834), 593 
Vezelay, Council of, 251 
Vicenza, 295, 341 
Vicksburg (U.S.), 741, 742 
Victor Amadeus II., Duke of 

Savoy, 493, 531 
Victor Emmanuel II (Ital}), 

621 627 
Victoria (Austral'a\ 761 
Victoria Nyanza, Lake, 700 
Victoria, Queen, 578, 579, 

676, 731 
Victorian Age, The, 584 
Vienna, 329, 392, 555, 561, 607 
Vienna, Congress of, 564, 607, 

615, 620 
Vigo, 494 
Vikings, The 215 
Villars, Marshal, 491, 496, 497 
Villehardouin, 374 
Villeneuve, Admiral, 554, 555 
Vi : leroi, Marshal, 493, 495 
Villon (poeO, 374 
Vindelicia, 160 
Virgil, 159 
Virginia, 515, 516, 517, 520, 

533, 739, 74°, 744 
Visconti, The, family (Milan), 

295, 296 
Visigoths (West Goths), 174, 

175, 176, 182, 189, 2.8 



Vitellius, Emperor, 165 
Vitiges (Witigis), King of 

Ostrogoths, 181 
Vladislaus of Hungary, 469, 

470 
Voiogases I. of Parthia, 65 
Vologases II. of Parthia, 67 
Volscians, The, 134 
Voltaire, 233, 536 



W. 

Wadai, 701 
Wadi-Halfa, 696 
Wahabis, lhe, 681, 689 
Waiblings (Ghibeliines), 287, 

294 
Walcheren expedition, 567 
Waldemar I. of Denmark, 276 
Waldemar II. of Denmark, 276 
Waldemar IV. of Denmark, 

364, 365 
Waldemar of Sweden, 277 
Waldenses (Vaudois), 475 
Wales, 196, 275, 2 99 
Wales, hrince of (son of 

Victoria), 675, 731 
Wales, Statute of, 299 
Wallace, William, 300 
Wallachia, 467, 639, 640 
Wallenstein, 452-455 
Walloon country, 317 
Walpole, Sir Rodert, 481: 
WarbecK, Perkin, 393 
Wars : — 

Afghan, First, 669 

Afghan, Second, 675 

Alexandrine, 155 

American Revolutionary, 
483 

Anglo-Persian, 6S0 

Antony and Octavianus, 157 

Austrian Succession, 482, 
525> 533, 66a 

Austro-Prussian, or Seven 
Weeks' War, 600, 624 

Boer War, 712 

Burmese War, First, 667 

Burmese War, Second, 672 

Caucasus, 632 

Chioggia, War of, 341 

China War, First (''Opium 
War"), 648 

China War, Second, 649 

China War, Third, 649 

Chitral, 677 

Chrysanthemums, War o 
the (Japan), 650 

Civil War, United States, 
587, 73i, 738 

Crimean, 640 

England and United States 
(1812-181.5), 721, 729 

Franco-Austrian, 623 

Franco-Dahomey, 707, 708 

Franco-German, 599-603 

French and Algiers, 693 

Fronde, The (France), 483 

Graeco-Persian War, First, 
57 

Graeco- Persian War, Second 
and Third, 88-100 

Huguenots in Fiance, 423- 
426 

" Hundred Years' War," 303 



79° 



Index 



Wars (continued) : — 
Indian Mutiny (or Sepoy 
Mutiny, or Sepoy War), 
673 
Japano-Chinese, 653 
Kaffir Wars, 710, 711 
King George's War (North 

America), 519 
King William's War (North 

America), 518 
Lamian War, 114 
Liberation War in Germany, 

562 
Macedonian Wars (Rome 

and Macedon), 116 
Marius and Sulla, 15T, 152 
Matabele Wars, 712 
Messenian Wars, 83 
Mithradatic War, 150 
Napoleonic Wars, 553-567 
" Opium " (First Chinese) 

War, 648 
Peloponnesian, 101-106 
Peninsular, 558-561 
Peru and Chili, 753 
Polish Succession, 525 
Pontiac War (North 

America), 525 
Punic War, First, 138 
Punic War, Second, 139-143 
Punic War, Third, 143-145 
Queen Anne's War (North 

America), 517 
Roses, Wars of the, 309, 310, 

314 
Russo-Turkish War (1877), 

641-643 
Samnite War, First (Latin), 

135 
Samnite War, Second, 135 
Samnite War, Third, 135, 136 
Servile Wars (Sicily), 152 
Seven Years' War, 483, 513, 

660 
Sikh War, First, 670, 671 
Sikh War, Second, 671, 672 
Social Wars (Italian), 149. 150 
Soudan War (British), 694 
Spain and Morocco, 694 
Spanish Succession, 482, 

494-497 
Thirty Years' War, 450-458 
" Three Henries," The 

(France), 426 
Turco-Greek War (1897), 

630 
United States and Mexico, 

755 
United States and Spain, 

747 
William III. and Louis 

XIV., 492, 493 
Zulu War, 711 
Warsaw, 467, 634 
Warwick, Earl of, 310, 312, 313 
Washington (city), 728, 729, 

743 
Washington, George, 520, 522, 
, 533, 534, 728 
Wat Tyler, 305 



Waterford, 200, 274 
Watt, James, 569 
Webster, Daniel, 736 
Welfs (Guelfs), 287, 288, 294 
Wellington, Duke of, 559, 56.-1, 

565, 578, 579, 664, 665, 666, 
734 

Wends (Slavs), 229, 230, 231, 
259, 276 

Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 
459. 461 

Wenzel (Wenceslaus) of Bo- 
hemia, 331 

Werder, General von, 602 

Wesley, Charles, 481 

Wesley, John, 4*1, 482 

Wesleyans (Methodists), 482 

Wessex, 195, 197,202,203, 219, 
220, 223, 224 

West India Isles (British), 751 

West Indies, 494, 750 

Westminster Abbey, 225 

Westphalia, 288 

Westphalia, Kingdom of, 562, 

566, 567 
Wexford, 200, 274, 476 
Whish, General, 671 
Whitby, Synod of, 202 

" White Terror "(France), 593 
Whitefield, George, 481 
Whitelock, General, 745, 755 
Whitney, Eli (U.S.), 728 
Wilberforce, William, 567 
Wilfrith (St. Wilfred), 182 
Wilhelmina of Holland, 616 
Wilkes, John, 550 
Willibrod (Willbrord), 182 
William, Duke of Normandy 

(I. of England), 225,226, 227, 

265, 275 
William II. of England (Ru- 

fus), 267, 276 
William III. of England 

(Prince of Orange), 477, 478, 

482, 487, 488, 491, 492, 493, 494 
William IV. of England, 579 
William, Fort (Calcutta), 659 
William I. of Germany, 612 
William II. of Germany, 612 
William I. of Holland, 566, 616 
William III. of Holland, 616 
William the Lion (Scotland), 

270, 275 
William of Longchamps, 270 
William Marshal, Earl of 

Pembroke, 272 
William of Ockham, 264 
William 1., King of Prussia 

(Emperor of Germany), 599, 

609, 611 
William " the Silent" (Prince 

of Orange), 436-444 
William of Wykeham, 371 
Wilmington (U.S.), 742 
Winchester, 371 
Winchester, Statute of, 301 
Windsor, 266 
Windsor Castle, 308 
Winfried (Winfrith), St., 182 
Winnipeg (Canada), 726 



Wisby, 363, 364,365 
Wisconsin (U.S.), 736 
Wiseman, Cardinal, 626 
Wishart, George, 414, 415 
H'i/aii, The, 105, 222, 225, 272 
Witigis, 181. See Vitiges 
Witt, Cornelius de, 487 
.Witt, John de, 487 
Wittenberg, 399, 400, 403 
Wolfe, General James, 522- 

,. 524 - 

Woile Tone ("Ireland), 551 

Wolseley, Lord, 691, 695, 702, 

726 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 394, 396 
" Women's kights,' 746 
Worms, 290, 401 
Worms, Concordat of, 236 
Worms, Diet of, 392, 401 
Worms, Edict of, 402 
Wulfila (or Ulphilas), 175 
Wiirtemberg, 457, 555, 567, 599, 

609, 610, 611 
Wyclif, John, 306, 307, 308, 331, 

335, 374 



Xenophon, 58, 119, 121 
Xerxes of Persia, 57, 96, 97 
Ximenes, Cardinal, 348 

Y. 

Yakub Khan, 675 
Yedo (Japan), 651, 652 
Yokohama (Japan), 651 
York, 410. See Eboracum 
York, Duke of (son of George 

HI.), 579 
Yorubas (West Africa), 704 
" Young Ireland " party, 587 

Z. 

Zacynthus, 101 

Zagros Mountains, 26, 53 

Zambesi (river), 700 

Zambesia, 712 

Zancle (Messana), 84 

Zanzibar, 701, 714 

Zarathustra (or Zaradusht) 
(Zoroaster), 52 

Zealand, 442 

Zealots, The, 35, 38 

Zedekiah, King, 32 

Zeno, Emperor, 120, 183, 184 

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, 
169 

Zeus, 74, 75, 77, 78 

Zerubbabel, 32 

Ziska of Bohemia, 336, 33/ 

Zollverein (or Customs- 
Union) (Germany), 608, 610 

Zoroaster, 207, 679. See 
Zarathustra 

Zululand, 715 

Zulus, 709 

Zurich, 334 

Zwingli (Zwinglius), 408, 409 



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